Unemployment Called High Priority
More than 60 percent of 388 American cities responding to a survey said unemployment was a high or top priority and the major problems were youths who lacked basic job skills and not enough jobs to go around, according to a report released yesterday by the National League of Cities.</br></br>Of those cities responding to the survey, 45 percent had unemployment rates exceeding 8.1 percent and 21.7 percent had rates of more than 10 percent, the report said. The national civilian unemployment rate in July was 7.5 percent.</br></br>ÛÏClearly there is a need to create more jobs," said Cleveland Mayor George V. Voinovich, first vice president of the group. ÛÏThere still is not enough work to go around, and the economic recovery has been uneven in many cities still suffering from high unemployment."</br></br>Donald Fraser, mayor of Minneapolis and chairman of the leagueÛªs task force on urban unemployment, said that 24 of 82 cities reporting unemployment exceeding 10 percent were in states generally from Illinois and Wisconsin through Ohio.</br></br>Only about one in five of the cities responding to the survey said unemployment was a top priority, while 26.5 percent said it was a moderate priority. About 42 percent said it was a high priority, the report said.