workers. Their numbers more than doubled from 1940 to 1956, as 311⁄2 million more women joined their ranks.

The demand for clerical workers continues to grow. This arises from the needs of business corporations and large-scale financial organizations. It likewise comes from expansion in market areas, in mail-order business, in governmental requirements, and in other undertakings. Recent inventions are mechanizing office processes to a greatly increased extent. Better trained clerical workers with mechanical and technical ability will be needed, rather than those able to perform only the simpler tasks that made up the great volume of clerical work in the past.

Increased numbers of women also have been needed in a variety of factory and service occupations. More than a million additional women went into each of these types of work between 1940 and 1956. Much of the increased demand for factory workers first arose during the war. In that period, changes in factory processes were accelerated, with emphasis on simplification and on reducing the heavier features of the work, as a result of which more jobs became suitable for performance by women. The demand has continued into today's high

level economy.

Table 2.-WOMEN EMPLOYED IN EACH OCCUPATION GROUP, 1956 AND 1940

Source: U. S. Bureau of the Census. Current Population Reports, P-57, No. 166.

The proportion of women among all workers is much greater in some occupation groups than in others. For example, two-thirds of the clerical workers and half the service workers (other than in private households) are women. Nearly all service workers in private households are women. Women are over a third of the professional

and sales workers, and more than a fourth of the operatives. On the other hand, in the managerial and crafts groups, the percentage of women is small.

In most occupation groups the proportion of women is larger than in 1940-in some cases considerably larger. The greatest gain is among clerical workers, of whom women were only a little over half in 1940, two-thirds in 1956. Only in the professional group is there a decline in proportion of workers who are women. Numerically, this group includes half a million more women than in 1940, but the increase in the number of men in the professions has far exceeded the increase in the number of women. One explanation is in the many women who marry young. Another is that numerous openings in nonprofessional jobs offer relatively good entrance pay without the time and expense necessary for a professional education. Such jobs attract many women even though they may promise little advancement in the long run. Other factors may be the current stress on scientific professions, in most of which women constitute only a small minority; and the efforts to advance veterans in jobs for which they have received GI college training.

According to the decennial census (1950), 37 percent of nonwhite women were in the labor force, a total of nearly 2,000,000. (See table 3.) The greatest gains, compared with 1940, occurred among service

Table 3.-NUMBER AND OCCUPATIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF NON WHITE
EMPLOYED WOMEN, 1950 AND 1940

Source: U. S. Bureau of the Census. Decennial census, 1940 and 1950.

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workers (not in private households), operatives, and clerical and professional workers. Farmworkers, and also private household workers, declined both in numbers and in percent of total.

Important Individual Occupations

Nationwide information on detailed occupations of women is obtained only once in 10 years, from the decennial census. At least a few women were reported in each of the 446 occupations listed in the 1950 census, but generally women were concentrated in relatively few occupations. Table 4 shows the number of women employed in 1950 in each of the 28 largest occupations for women, and the percentage of all workers in that occupation who were women.

Table 4.-THE 28 LARGEST OCCUPATIONS OF WOMEN, 1950

In certain individual occupations, a very large proportion of all workers are women. The list that follows shows the occupations in which half or more of the workers in 1950 were women. Some of these are among the largest occupations for women, others are relatively small, because the occupation itself is not a large one. Additional detail is given in Women's Bureau Bulletin 253, "Changes in Women's Occupations, 1940-50.”

OCCUPATIONS WITH WOMEN HALF OR MORE OF THE WORKERS, 1950