Soviet Union: Are the Jobless Unemployed?

Unemployment has not existed in the Soviet Union since 1930—officially. The Russians are nonetheless finding it harder to ignore the growing number of people who are out of work. The rate is still officially only about1½% of the work force—largely because of close state control of jobs and much make-work—but that means that more than 1,000,000 workers are out of jobs in a society that claims to take care of all the workers' needs. The figure is much higher if short-term unemployment is included: an estimated 11 million Soviet workers switch jobs each year, each averaging an unpaid layoff of 30 days. The problem has become so serious that for the first time it is being openly discussed in the Soviet Union. Kitchen Gardeners. Primed by a high postwar birth rate and changes in the Soviet economy, unemployment has become particularly bothersome in Lithuania, Moldavia, Byelorussia, Siberia and in the Central Asiatic Republics. Partly to blame is that old Western bugaboo, automation. When, for instance, Red planners automated the lime and asphalt plants of Leninsk in Tula province, they put half the region's unskilled laborers out of work. The Soviet Union also has a rising number of young people—many of them school dropouts—who are unable to find work because they lack the skills required by modern industry. Even technical skill is not always a guarantee of a job: 254 graduates of a Moscow machine-tool school and 60 trained radio technicians can not find jobs in their fields. The old dodge of opening up land in Siberia is out, because Russians are no longer willing to toil where schools and housing are poor, wages are low and prices twice what they are elsewhere. The result is not only a dwindling influx of pioneers, but a soaring outflow of migrants: close to 1,000,000 in the past seven years. Most of them go to the Caucasus, where they settle down as "kitchen gardeners"—people who farm their own backyards. More Daring. If they have their way, the followers of Economist Evsei Liberman (TIME cover, Feb. 12), who want to put the Soviet economy on a profit basis, will swell the jobless ranks even more. In Kommunist, Economist G. Shubkin recently complained that two workers often shared the same task in 60 Moscow factories he studied. Shubkin's suggestion: with the "inevitable dismissal of this surplus labor," employment agencies should be set up to find jobs for the displaced workers. Liber-manist Efim Manevich made an even more daring proposal in the journal Problems of Economics. He suggested the introduction of unemployment compensation, a relic of capitalism that Stalin abolished 35 years ago. Manevich went on to urge another capitalist-toned remedy. Pointing out that the U.S.S.R. has far fewer retail-sales employees than the U.S.—he figures the number at 16 per 1,000 inhabitants v. 76 per 1,000 for the U.S. —he suggested that increasing service at the counter would not only provide jobs but would also satisfy the growing consumer demands for better service.