Published Date

September 1, 1944

Resource Type

GI Roundtable Series, Primary Source

By Dorothy C. Kahn
Former President, American Association of Social Workers

Revised by Thomas K. Ford, American Historical Association
and Edwin G. Nourse, vice president, Brookings Institute

(Published September 1944)

 

Table of Contents

Introduction

Is There Going to Be Enough Work to Go Around?

What Is Actually Being Done about Postwar Employment?

What Special Aids for Servicemen Will There Be?

To the Discussion Leader

Suggestions for Further Reading

 

Introduction

Jobs in the post-war world is a topic of interest to every officer and man in the United States Army, and for that matter, in all armies. We are interested because we are all involved, or will be. A large majority of us expect to resume a normal working life when we are discharged from the Army; most of us must, of necessity, find some kind of employment.

No one can foresee the kind of world which the war will leave behind, but we are subject to hopes and fears and the two play round robin when we attempt to imagine ourselves home and seeking a job. Whatever our powers of foresight, it is advisable to consider that the world we must inherit will be a different world from the one we left; and the job we left will not necessarily be the one to which we will return. What is important is that we fend a job that will give us a decent living.

Every one of us has enough at stake to consider the facts presented with care, and to prepare ourselves for a future whose limits and features still lie beyond the horizon. One way to prepare for that future is to give it as much study as the present permits and to make of the present, whenever possible, a training laboratory for the future.—from “Jobs after the War,” vol. II, no. 6, Feb. 9, 1944, of Army Talks—ETOUSA