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The Negative Outlook. The outlook for these groups, says the Labor Department, is "negative." Not all economists agree that it will be permanently negative. Dr. Arthur Burns, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in Eisenhower's first term, believes that "most of the unemployment is a cyclical problem," and expects unemployment to drop to 4% ("virtually full employment") within 15 to 18 months if the economy makes a good upturn. Kennedy's chief economic adviser, Dr. Walter Heller, agrees with Burns that the present high rate of unemployment is primarily a result of poor business—though, unlike Burns, he believes it will be necessary to use Government stimulants to get the economy growing fast enough to solve the unemployment problem.
The Federal Reserve Board's Martin disagrees with both Burns and Heller, believes that "there are forces at work that have produced another structural type of unemployment that already has proved to be indefinitely persistent, even in periods of unprecedented general prosperity." The man who knows most about the unemployment statistics, Labor Department Manpower Expert Seymour Wolfbein, feels that structural, or continued, unemployment is a growing threat—but that little can be done about it until the economy advances far enough to get the cyclically unemployed back to work. "You will still have structural unemployment," says Wolfbein, "but to try to lick the structural problem is a lot easier from a high level of business activity than from a low one."
No Longer Automatic. Even at a high level of business activity, warns Wolfbein, there will be limits to what can be done about the unemployables—except by the unemployables themselves. Government agencies and communities can retrain workers and try to attract new industry to depressed areas. But the unemployables must be willing to learn new skills and be ready to move to where the jobs are. And the nation's labor force in the 19603 will need more schooling than before to hold their own in the competition. "A job is no longer automatic," says Seymour Wolfbein. "Without preparation, a U.S. worker will have, increasingly, a hard time finding a job."