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the unemployment problem. 663
Table 75. The Public Labour Exchanges.
Year Number of offices Number of Number of situations filled
Län Central offices ffices Branch offices [-Independent-] {+Indepen- dent+} offices [-applications-] {+applica- tions+} situations offered Total [-Agricultural-] {+Agri- cultural+} labour
1906 ......... _ 9 51300 51 200 31100 2100
1907 ......... — 10 68 400 64 500 36 600 2 800
1908 ......... 3 15 10 98 000 67 100 39 800 6 400
1909 ......... 6 25 8 126 300 84 500 52 000 10 800
1910......... 13 39 13 143 300 103 600 67 000 15 501)
1911......... 16 53 14 164 800 125 000 84 800 20 700
1912......... 18 61 14 190 200 152 500 105 000 25 800
1913......... 18 68 14 201 000 172 700 118 000 28 200
Having undergone a steady and vigorous development, the public
labour exchange work now covers nearly all the läns in Sweden and will
probably soon extend its activity even to the few remaining ones. The
system thus having been on the whole completed, the authorities have
taken into consideration the question of supplementing it, specially with
regard to some categories of applicants, in the first place school-children,
apprentices, and persons desiring to enlist in the army and the navy, or
desiring to get a civil post after serving their time. Steps have also been
taken for assisting, by means of the public labour exchanges, Swedes
abroad, who wish to get employment in their native country.
The Unemployment Problem.
In all countries within the temperate zone, the supply of labour in the
labour market is dependent on the climate: in the cold season of the year it
diminishes in those branches which cold weather either brings to a
standstill, as in agriculture, or which it very greatly handicaps, as in the building
trade and its affiliated industries. This fluctuation of the supply of labour
in different seasons of the year is, obviously, still more marked in a country
with such a northerly geographical position as Sweden. However, Sweden’s
long and cold winter not merely diminishes the supply of labour in agriculture
and building, which are in their very nature season trades, but also — by the direct
and indirect action of the winter darkness and frost — the supply of labour
in those branches which are otherwise but little affected by fluctuations of
temperature, as, for instance, the big export ore fields, the saw-mills and cellulose
factories in the North of Sweden, dockyards, harbour works, the carrier trade,
and so forth. This diminution of the supply of labour falls in the first place
on the many unskilled workmen and casual labourers in these branches. These
men, whose services can be dispensed with in the dead season, are dismissed
when winter comes on. Hence all labourers engaged in agriculture and in the
building trades, as well as the bulk of the unskilled workmen, which means
the great majority of the working population of Sweden, are distinctly "season
labourers".
Under these circumstances, one might expect to find very extensive and verv
protracted unemployment in Sweden. Fortunately, this is not so: for one reason,
because in the greater part of Sweden, and particularly in Norrland, lumbering
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