OASDHI Contributions on Cash-Payment Basis

The findings of this explorat,ion of interindustry mobility patterns have revealed the existence of sizable amounts of both voluntary and involuntary mobility among the labor force in the United States. The indication that there is a meaningful amount, of purposive mobility in the economy is reassuring. Its presence makes possible some of the marginal adjustments in the labor market envisaged in the conventional economic theory of the operation of the labor market. Such a conclusion suggests that, the process of interindustry labor mobility has the potential for making a significant cont.ribution toward solving some of the problems discussed initially-reducing unemployment, increasing economic growth, and limiting inflation. At the same t,ime the existence of such a large amount of involuntary mobility is somewhaf disquieting. The greater the amount of such mobilit,y the greater the pressure on t,he labor-market adjustment mechanism and the more difficult it becomes to achieve a given level of efficiency in tlie economy. Of particular concern in this respect is the substantial amount of laborforce withdrawal that occurs whenever displacement of workers takes place. Td the extent that this labor-force withdrawal is the result of an inability of the labor-market mechanism to present workers with alternatives sufficiently attractive to keep them in the labor force, such withdrawal represents a loss of output for the economy. The differences between mobility patterns among Negroes and all workers also provide some insight into the reasons for relatively low levels of earnings among Negro men. Apparently, Negroes are more prone to change jobs, are more likely to be shifted towards lowearnings industries, and are more adversely affected in employment and income by the impact, of the business cycle. The cumulative etfect of these phenomena is to contribute to the relative decline in the earnings level of Negro men noted earlier.