Since rehabilitation is an important factor in establishing or improving the employability of many severely disabled persons, the Bureau worked during the year with several organizations whose objective is to extend and improve rehabilitation services. In this connection, it participated in the planning for the 1960 National Conference on Work Evaluation Units, sponsored by the American Heart Association; and worked closely with the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation to assure that persons who needed rehabilitative services got them and that the vocational aspects of such service were realistic and practical.

Aptitude and Proficiency Testing

About 1,400 local offices of the various State employment services affiliated with the United States Employment Service are equipped with testing units and they tested about a million and a half applicants during the year. The tests given measure potentiality for acquiring skills as well as providing a measure of existing skills. About one-third of the individuals were given aptitude test batteries as an aid in the selection of applicants for referral to specific job openings; one-third were given the United States Employment Service (USES) General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) as an aid in determining suitable vocational possibilities for counselees' abilities; and one-third were given typing and stenographic proficiency tests.

In response to requests from employers and unions, and with their cooperation, specific aptitude test batteries were validated for 79 occupations. These included occupations such as lineman, medical technologist, monotype keyboard operator, painter, and radio receiver assembler. A number of these test development studies were conducted on a multistate basis in various branch plants of multistate employers. These and other multistate employers indicated an interest in recruiting test-selected workers through local employment service offices. During the year, about 1,000 multistate employers with about 1,300 branch plants were served regularly by local employment service offices with test-selected learners for entry jobs.

Arrangements were made during the year with numerous apprenticeship agencies, joint apprenticeship councils, training agencies, and educational institutions for the use of USES tests. About 40 State employment security agencies used specific aptitude test batteries regularly in the selection and referral of applicants to apprenticeable job openings. Cooperative agreements were reached between a number of State employment security agencies and State departments of vocational education through which local employment service offices would administer the GATB to applicants for training by industrial training institutes established under title VIII of the National Defense Education Act. After training has been provided by State employment service personnel in the proper use of the tests, GATB scores will be furnished to appropriate institute personnel for use in counseling.

The GATB test results were also used by Bureau of Indian Affairs relocation officers in appraising the potentialities of Indians on reservations for vocational training off the reservation.

A number of universities and colleges in the country inaugurated the use of the GATB in their student counseling bureaus. General Aptitude Test Battery materials were also used extensively for instructional purposes in college courses on tests and measurements, personnel, and vocational guidance.

Because of the many requests received from school officials for the use of the GATB in the early identification of the vocational aptitudes of youth, norms were developed for use in the interpretation of GATB scores of 9th- and 10thgrade students. These are tentative norms based on data for 5,921 students tested by 6 State employment security agencies. A longitudinal maturation study currently in progress in 19 States will yield data on a larger and more. representative sample, after the ninth-graders tested in 1958 have been retested in the 12th grade in 1961.

A number of studies were undertaken during the year to modernize USES proficiency tests. The spelling tests were revised to permit machine scoring. The same items are included in the new tests but they have been arranged on an International Business Machine (IBM) form which can be scored by machine. Each of the new tests is now on only one page, in contrast to the two pages for the previous edition. A new window scoring stencil for use with either of the new tests was also prepared to reduce the scoring time even when the tests are hand scored. A revision of the USES typing and dictation test materials was undertaken to reflect language currently used in modern business operations.

Seven State employment security agencies collected materials from employers in various professions and industries which would be representative of typing and dictation material currently used. Suitable alternative forms of the new test exercises will be constructed and norms established on a representative sample of employed typists and stenographers to whom the new test exercises have been administered.

Employment Counseling Services

Counseling activities reached an alltime high during fiscal year 1959. More than a million jobseekers, 11,000 more than in fiscal 1958, were furnished counseling services in fiscal year 1959. These applicants were provided 1,734,000 interviews, 191,000 more than the previous year. The Bureau's GATB was administered to a total of 511,000 counselees, an increase of 83,000 over fiscal 1958. These increases in service took place during the same period that the Bureau was laying its greatest stress on further improving the caliber of counseling service through improved selection of local office counselors, university training courses for counselors, improved supervision, and other advanced methods and techniques.

Standards for selection and sample job specifications for counselor trainees, journeyman counselors, and supervisory counselors were developed and released to the State agencies early in the year, along with guides for implementing the standards and a policy on outservice training. Forty-five States took steps toward adoption of this broad program for improved selection and development

of counselors. During the year, counselors from 31 States attended special 3- to 6-week counseling courses at 21 universities; counselors from 9 States attended regular college courses in vocational guidance; and in 4 States, some counselors attended regular college courses and some special workshop courses. More than 800 counselors participated in outservice training.

Funds were provided to nine States to experiment with a pilot installation of an area counselor plan. A full-time counselor was assigned to serve two or three smaller offices on a scheduled basis in place of part-time counselors who have other pressing duties. States experimenting with the plan indicate that although careful scheduling is necessary, improved counseling service results. A National Conference of State Counseling Supervisors was held in October to discuss new developments in counseling; to identify areas which should be considered for current and future emphasis; and to give State agency participants an opportunity to exchange experiences, ideas, and suggestions for improving the counseling programs. Sixty-one State agency and II regional office representatives who have responsibility for the counseling program attended. Major topics of discussion included selection and development of counseling personnel, meeting the need for counseling service in small towns and rural areas, the cooperative program with the schools, improved methods and procedures in counseling, and improving supervision of counseling service.

Community Employment Programs

While fiscal year 1959 was a year of economic recovery, the lag in the recovery of employment in some areas highlighted the fact that fundamental changes were occurring in the economy of the country. Among them were the geographical movements of industries, changes in demand for products and resources, and shifts in the occupational composition of the work force. These changes made it imperative that all areas-both the gainers from and losers by the changes-plan and work for their future employment development. State employment agencies and their local offices were urged to participate in economic development activities and to bring their special skills and resources to bear upon the task of creating new job opportunities.

A pamphlet entitled "Community Organization for Employment Development," describing different types of development committees and outlining steps. in their formation and operation, was prepared and distributed. Exhibits and display literature were provided to the States to promote employment development activities and publicize the contribution the employment service can. make in the development of programs to increase job opportunities.

State employment security agencies participated widely in both State and local employment development activities in fiscal year 1959. State agency staff members served on, or were consultants to, approximately 850 employment development groups across the Nation. Most of these groups were engaged in industrial development, seeking to expand existing industries or attract new plants to their State or community, either through promotional activities or

by offering financial assistance or both to the prospective firm. Many groups were also concerned with community improvement in general, working for revised zoning laws, new water and sewerage systems, development of industrial parks, inauguration of training programs, etc., with the ultimate goal of a broader and stronger employment base. In all of these activities, the local offices played an important role, helping to plan training programs, providing manpower data for promotional purposes, and placing workers in new or expanded plants.

Through the community employment program, assistance was provided to development groups in both labor surplus and labor shortage situations. Groups in labor surplus areas used employment service information to demonstrate the relative abundance of qualified workers available for staffing new plants. Groups in areas threatened with a shortage of certain skills were given help in setting up appropriate training programs. Those in areas of short labor supply relied upon employment service recruitment techniques to assure adequate staff for new plants. By encouraging the use of these regular placement and informational programs in economic development, the Bureau's community employment program opened up new placement opportunities for the employment service and demonstrated to local communities the need for employment planning to develop new job opportunities.

Areas not sharing fully in the Nation's return to prosperity are for the most part low-income rural areas suffering from widespread unemployment and underemployment. Generally, this has resulted from a decline in agricultural employment and a lack of nonfarm job opportunities. The Department of Labor and the Department of Agriculture, working with and through their respective State and local counterparts, initiated an experimental rural area program to develop methods for providing assistance to rural areas in planning and executing programs of economic self-improvement. The Bureau's specific objectives with respect to such areas are to (1) develop methods to provide effective basic employment services; (2) determine current and potential manpower resources; (3) assist in evaluating overall economic resources; (4) conduct intensive job solicitation campaigns within and outside the areas; and (5) assist in the development of a program for economic adjustment.

One area in each of four States-Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Wisconsin-was selected in which to conduct the experimental rural area program. A work committee consisting of representatives of each of the State employment security agencies met with Bureau staff in January 1959 in Washington for consultation in the preparation of the "Experiment Rural Area Handbook,” which sets forth the plan of operation. By late spring, all of the State employment security agencies were well along with preparations and, at the year's end, were engaged in assembling economic data in the area, testing and counseling unemployed and underemployed registrants, and carrying out job development campaigns. A Bureau representative visited each State and worked with and advised the field staff in launching the program.

Farm Labor Service

Farm labor comprises about 10 percent of the Nation's total employment. The Bureau's Farm Labor Service has the responsibility for guiding and coordinating programs to assist both growers and farm laborers, including domestic migratory workers and foreign farm labor. Chief function of the operation is to bring together agricultural workers and employers, including those engaged in food processing. However, such diverse but related activities as estimating crop yield to determine manpower requirements, acting in emergencies to avert crop loss, making prevailing wage determinations and inspecting housing facili ties for Mexican agricultural workers, finding live-in jobs on farms for young people from urban areas, or referring grain combines to farmers ready to harvest are among the activities of the Farm Labor Service. The operation is carried out through the State employment security agencies and their local employment offices, each of which in agricultural areas has an identifiable farm placement service with farm labor field representatives.

Fiscal year 1959 was one of agriculture's outstanding production years, and recruitment of workers available to agriculture posed difficult problems for farm labor field representatives of the Bureau, State agencies, and local offices. Recruitment plans in many cases had to be changed quickly to avoid labor shortage emergencies because of the characteristics of the year's crop-weather pattern. Complicating the problems were technological developments in agriculture and the increasing use of machines for cultivating and harvest of many more cropsboth acting to disrupt the historical pattern of the farm labor force-coupled with the continued decline of total farm labor.

Monthly farm labor employment averaged 5,881,000-3 percent less than in fiscal year 1958 and about one-fifth less than in 1950. The year-to-year drop was confined to farm operators and unpaid members of their families. Hired worker employment averaged 1,711,000 in fiscal 1959-slightly higher than the year before and only a little less than in 1950.

Seasonal shifts in agricultural employment shared the same large fluctuations as in previous years. A low of 295,000 seasonal hired workers was reported in February 1959. At the mid-October 1958 peak, employment of seasonal hired farmworkers in the 267 major agricultural areas reporting to the Bureau totaled over 1,355,000-8 percent higher than in the previous year.

Higher output of cotton and of several other crops, together with an earlier season, raised seasonal hired employment to 1,220,000 in June 1959-8 percent above a year ago.

Program Emphasis

During fiscal year 1959, increased attention was given to strengthening the interstate recruitment system under which the public employment service supplies migrant workers to farmers. Proposals to make further use of the Secretary's rulemaking power to regulate this function of interstate recruitment of agricultural workers were discussed with Members of Congress, State employ