Unemployment and Recovery

Archive Report

Continuance of Heavy Unemployment Relief Burden

President roosevelt reported in his relief message to Congress on March 18,936, that approximately 5,300,000 families and unattached persons were then receiving public assistance—3,800,000 on the federal works program and 1,500,000 unemployables on local and state relief rolls. Official estimates of the whole number of persons supported by the works program and by direct relief are not available, but it is indicated that the total is now in the neighborhood of 19,000,000 to 20,000,000 men, women, and children. That number approximates the corresponding total for May, 1935, and is larger than the estimates for the same month in 1933 and 1934.1 Federal, state, and local emergency relief expenditures increased from a combined total of $793,000,000 in 1933 to $1,477,000,000 ...

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