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3
reduction in the number of unemployed until at
Christmas the registers were lower than at any time
since the war, 196 men and 52 women being unemployed®
The majority of those registered as unemployed
were in process of changing their jobs but there was
a hardcore of elderly people and some disabled persons
who could not be placed in employment.
Statistics relating to Kingston only are not available
but it is probably true to say that approximately
one-third of those on our Registers at any time are
residents of Kingston, the remainder living in the
adjoining Local Authority areas covered by this Employment
Exchangee
There was an unsatisfied demand for skilled labour
of all types during the year, 5,208 men and 2,206
women were placed in employment in the Employment
Exchange area during the year and at the end there
were approximately 1,000 vacancies for men and 400
for women remaining unfilled,
Ab in past years the greatest demand on available
manpower has been from the aircraft, engineering and
building industries•
There are always vacancies for women in retail
distribution, in offices and factories but the main
demand is for domestic workers in private households
and institutions,"
3 Extracts from Vital Statistics of the Year•
The crude birth and death rates for local areas
cannot properly be compared by reason of the fact that the
populations on which they are based may be of widely differing
sex and age constitutions,, Consequently the Registrar General
provides a comparability factor for each area,, When the crude
rate of any area is multiplied by this factor an adjusted rate
is produced which can be used to compare with the adjusted
rate of any other area, or with the crude rate for England and
Wales as a whole (where the comparability factor is unity).
The comparability factors for Kingston are
Births O.95; Deaths 0.86.
\
The birth and death rates in respect of the town are
shown overlsaf and for the purpose of providing some cemparison
the rates for England and Wales are also shown,. It
will be notieed that the rates for Kingston-upon-Thames are
lower than for the country as a whole •
It is noticeable that the infant death rate and the
stillbirth rate were very low in Kingston-upon-Thames during
1955. They are both in fact considerably lower than in
previous years and are nearly half the national rate,
A steady downward trend is hoped for in these rates each year
but such a dramatic drop cannot be expected to be maintained
in future years. It has to be borne in mind that although
some infant deaths and stillbirths are preventable many are
not, arising from abnormalities which cannot yet be rectified.