The unusual manpower requirements of West Coast industry during the war were met primarily by the inflow of workers migrating from other regions and by the added participation of housewives, students, retired men, and other "extra" workers who ordinarily would have been outside the labor market. Approximately 847,000 workers came from other sections of the country to find jobs on the West Coast; in addition, some 652,000 extra wartime workers were drawn from the resident population into the labor force. These groups, supplemented by approximately 92,000 new entries that were added as the result of natural population growth and long-term trends in labor-market participation, accounted for the Pacific Coast's total labor-force expansion of 1,591,000 during the war. The part played by each of these sources of wartime labor supply in each Pacific Coast State is summarized in table 2.

MIGRATION

The West Coast has characteristically been an importer of labor. Large-scale migration westward has been the most important factor underlying the rapid population and labor-force growth of the region. Between 1920 and 1930, the gain was 1,620,000 persons through population exchanges with other regions. The westward movement slackened somewhat during the depression years of the 1930's, but the Pacific States showed a net gain of 1,300,000 persons during that decade. Expanding employment opportunities between 1940 and 1945 brought net in-migration to the region to a total of 1,984,000,. including the 847,000 workers previously mentioned. These migration figures exclude any members of the armed forces from other regions who may have had plans to settle on the West Coast after their discharge.

The large majority of the migrants to the West Coast during the war located in California, but substantial numbers settled in Washington and Oregon. Most of the newcomers came from the Central farm belt stretching from North Dakota and Minnesota in the North to Texas and Louisiana in the South. The wartime population movements between major geographic divisions of the United States closely followed the pattern of prewar migration, as shown by the tabulation following. (See also chart 2.)

The wartime movement of people within the Pacific Coast region, particularly from rural to industrial areas, was also highly significant, though far less publicized than the migration over longer distances. Indirect evidence of the magnitude of rural to urban shifts within the Pacific States is found in the fact that internal migration in the West (including the Mountain States) reached record volumes during the

war. Migration within States located in the West totaled 950,000 between December 1941 and March 1945, while migration across State lines within the region amounted to 770,000. Moreover, 1 out, of 4 migrants into the congested production areas on the West Coast between 1940 and 1944, came from within the Pacific region itself. Net migration (in thousands)1

1 Source of 1935-40 data, Bureau of the Census, 16th Census of the United States, 1940, Population, Internal Migration 1935-40, Color and Sex of Migrants, Washington, 1943; 1940-45 data, Bureau of the Census, Population, Special Report P-46, No. 3 (adjusted to exclude immigrants from other countries), Washington, 1946.

EXTRA WARTIME WORKERS

Examination of the surveys of the 5 congested urban areas on the West Coast furnishes some idea of the personal characteristics of the 652,000 extra wartime workers drawn from the resident population of the Pacific States. There were in these areas in 1944, approximately 378,000 workers drawn from the resident population who on the basis of long-term peacetime trends would not have been expected to work or seek work. The characteristics of these extra workers showed a marked similarity to those of extra workers in the Nation as a whole."

Youths of school and college age were a major source of additional labor supply for the war. Although many of these worked only parttime, while continuing to attend school, many others left school early to take civilian jobs or enter the armed forces.

• Intrastate migration includes migrants whose place of residence was in a different county but in the same State as the place of residence in December 1941.

'See Bureau of the Census, Population, Series P-S, No. 5, Washington, September 2, 1945.

* See Edwin D. Goldfield, The Wartime Labor Force in Major Industrial Areas (in Review of Economic Statistics, Cambridge, Mass., August 1945).

N. MEX.

OKLA
TEXAS

Women over the age of 35 years also entered the labor market in unusual numbers in response to wartime labor demands. Most of the extra workers from this group were married women without responsibility for the care of young children. On the other hand, extra participation of young women between the ages of 20 and 34 was limited by the sharp rise in marriages and births after 1940. The entry of young married men into the armed forces, however, caused many young service wives to obtain jobs or to continue working after they normally would have quit.

Of the extra, workers among adult men, some had postponed retirement, some had been able to find steady work, after being employed only intermittently before the war, and others, who had been considered virtually unemployable by the rigid prewar standards, found a market for their services during wartime.

Prospective Labor Supply

The effects of migration on the Pacific Coast labor supply are expected to prove more lasting than the effects of participation of extra workers. Wartime population movements followed wellestablished prewar patterns; migration was from areas in which expansion of employment opportunities failed to keep up with population growth to the growing industrial areas. The long-term stability in the geographic distribution of employment opportunities was not basically altered by the war.

Moreover, the widely predicted large-scale exodus of workers from war centers following the end of hostilities failed to materialize. While some return migration undoubtedly took place after the war, cities such as San Diego and Los Angeles had considerably larger populations early in 1946 than in April 1944.10 This is attributable not only to the return of servicemen, but also to the fact that the economy of the Far West was very successful in absorbing workers displaced by reconversion cut-backs in war production. Within a year after the war's end, the number of employees in nonagricultural establishments had reached the VJ-day level. This relatively smooth transition from war to peacetime activities has encouraged workers who migrated during the war to remain in the West.

In view of these postwar developments and the long-term trend westward both in times of prosperity and in times of depression, migration between 1945 and 1950 is likely to be at a rate at least as great as the prewar 1935 to 1940-rate. Only if a period of severe de• See Seymour L. Wolfbein and A. J. Jaffe, Internal Migration and Full Employment (in Journal of the American Statistical Association, Washington, D. C., September 1945).

10 See Bureau of the Census, Population, Series P-SC, No. 183, 1946, and Series CA, Nos. 2 and 5, Wash. ington, April 29 and May 25, 1944.

pression were to set in, would the rate be likely to fall below the prewar level.

Judging from the national experience and prospects, most of the extra workers drawn into the West Coast labor force are likely to drop out by 1950. In the Nation as a whole, only one-fourth of 8 million extra wartime workers were still in the labor force after 1 year of peace. The greatest decline in the extra-worker group occurred among school-age youth and college-age men and women, as the prewar trend toward longer schooling was resumed and large numbers of veterans whose education had been interrupted during the war returned to school with the aid of the "GI Bill of Rights."

Next in importance has been retirement from the national labor force of 11⁄2 million women between the ages of 20 and 34 years. This movement stimulated by the current high marriage and birth rates, is consistent with the previous observation that women in the early years of marriage and childbearing are least responsive to employment opportunities. Currently, the fact that there are about 1 million fewer of this age in the labor market, than might have been expected on the basis of prewar trends, indicates the extent to which such women will retire from employment if there are ample opportunities for male wage earners at relatively high wages.

In contrast, only 1 million of the women aged 35 years and over and virtually none of the men aged 25 and over who entered the labor force during the war retired from it during the first postwar year. It is recognized that one of the effects of the urgent wartime demand for labor was to provide employment opportunities for older men and women who had been forced from the labor market because of a lack of work opportunities during the depression. Whether or not they remain in the labor force in the coming years will depend largely upon the availability of employment opportunities.

All factors considered, the number of additional workers in the 1950 United States labor force is expected to be about 1 millionroughly 15 percent of the wartime total. On the same basis, the wartime extra-worker total on the West Coast in 1950 would be about 100,000.

Table 3 presents estimates of prospective labor supply on the West Coast in 1950, under three assumptions as to the volume of interstate migration between 1945 and 1950. In all three projections, it is assumed that participation of extra workers in each State will be 15 percent of the wartime extra-worker total.

Under the medium assumption (B), the West Coast's labor supply in 1950 would come to about 5,800,000 persons-approximately 1,500,000 above the 1940 level and only slightly below the wartime