Retraining for New Jobs

Report Outline
Need to Retrain Displaced Workers
State and Federal Retraining Plans
Obstacles to Effective Retraining
Foreign Experience with Retraining

Need to Retrain Displaced Workers

Anew effort by the federal government to retrain workers whose skills have become obsolete—and to give the unskilled some elementary training—is fast gathering momentum. Programs authorized by the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1962 are intended to help the long-term unemployed, many of them victims of automation, to acquire job qualifications for which there is demand in today's labor market.

The U.S, Department of Labor by mid-October had approved 239 training projects to be carried out under the new legislation in 28 states and the District of Columbia. Applications of 9,358 persons had been approved for training in one or another of a long list of occupations ranging from automobile mechanic, service station attendant, and welder to draftsman, electronics data processor, laboratory technician, machine operator, and typist.

Experience accumulated on a limited number of retraining projects for unemployed persons in depressed areas, under the Area Redevelopment Act of 1961, and lessons learned from state, local and private retraining schemes, indicate that many obstacles lie in the way of the new effort. Not the least is the attitude of the displaced worker, filled as he may be with doubts about his ability to acquire new skills or, once he has done so, to find a job in his community. But Labor Department officials believe that if 400,000 workers can be retrained and placed in jobs over a three-year period, as projected, the nation will be closer to solving what President Kennedy has called the major domestic challenge of the 1960s: “To maintain full employment at a time when automation…is replacing men.”