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and a complete occupational analysis of tlie building and construction industry. The Monthly Review, in conjunction with the Half-yearly Survey, gives to the Dominion for the first time current and comprehensive data on all employment movements. The uses of this data are manifold, and are referred to at various points in this report. 42. A time of scarcity should obviously be a time for particularly careful stocktaking and husbanding of resources. To weather a time of scarcity successfully, no matter what it is that happens to be scarce; requires a careful and up-to-date knowledge of stocks and of the distribution of those stocks, a factual or physical measuring up of unbalances and wastages, and a close and continuing check on the extent to which shortages at the various points are approaching a critical stage and on the extent to which the position can be eased by trimming and readjusting. Accurate and up-to-date knowledge of supplies and their distribution and use is, for those in need of the supplies, far more vital in a time of scarcity than in a time of plenty. 43. For those disposing of the supplies, the reverse is the case. From their point of view, a time of acute shortage offers fewer problems. Their greater problems arise in time of surplus, when it becomes necessary to know what is happening to stocks and to demand, how much surplus has to be disposed of, how rapidly it is accumulating, in what directions and to what extent are the various users cutting down their requirements, where can alternative users be found ? In a time of surplus, information becomes vital to the disposer and becomes less vital to the user. 44. Whether there is scarcity or surplus, one or other of these two major divisions of the community, the disposers and the users (in the case of labour, the workers and the employers) will benefit from the availability of information and may get into difficulties without it. At all times the whole community gains from the consequent more effective utilization of labour. 45. The various points of application of such information can be broadly summarized in three groups, as follows: (1) Use of employment information to influence the supply or distribution of labour through : (a) Immigration. (b) Location of reserve pools of labour. (c) Adjustment of public-works programmes. (d) Location of housing and other accommodation. (e) Changes in relative wage attractions and in factors governing these. (/) Facilities for transference of labour from place to place. (ff) Various other applications influencing the supply and distribution of labour, such as—(i) The influence of vocational guidance, (ii) Trade training, (hi) Publicity, (iv) Transport, &c. (2) Use of employment information towards securing the use of labour to fullest advantage by : (h) Reducing unemployment. \i) Reducing time lost in changing from one job to another. (j) Reducing labour wastage arising out of excessive turnover. (Jc) Reducing labour wastage arising out of a failure of a worker to get into a job enabling his best or most skilled performance. (I) Elimination of bottlenecks. (3) Use of employment information in measures influencing the more general well-being of the comrqLunity, such as : —• (to) Assisting workers to secure continuity of employment. (n) Securing various less direct advantages to the community through sustained purchasingpower, better-balanced local economies, increased production levels and standard of living, &c. (o) Planning the development of natural resources and services in alignment with the rates and direction of industrial expansions. (p) Basing education and occupational training on real requirements and opportunities. (q) Attaining or maintaining an effective relationship between the actualities of the man-power position in industry and such policy matters as school-leaving age, age and conditions of retirement, &c. (r) Maintaining full employment through budgetary and other Government measures.

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