New York State Department of Labor Division of Placement and Unemployment Insurance Subject and Correspondence Files

Roughly chronological.

This group of records of the Division of Placement and Unemployment Insurance, dealing with unemployment compensation, unemployment insurance, homework, and work relief programs, dates approximately from the division's creation in 1935 through the evolution of several related entities. These include the Unemployment Insurance Appeal Board; the Division of Unemployment; the Division of Industrial Relations; the Division of Women in Industry and Minimum Wage; and the State Advisory Council on Placement and Unemployment Insurance.

The bulk are statistical and narrative reports, memoranda, meeting minutes, correspondence and subject files pertaining to industrial homework; women and child employment; federal minimum wage; emergency wartime agricultural labor policies (such as release of of pupils for planting and harvesting); information relative to numbers, age, and salaries of workers; copies of orders regulating specific industries; and complaints on administrative determinations of unemployment insurance.

Also included are small amounts of material from the Division of Research and Statistics, including distribution of hourly earnings by select industries; charts and graphs on tracking unemployment insurance claims; tables on out-migration of industry; workplace discrimination; lists of average duration of known employment; and estimations of effects of increasing the minimum wage.

Also included are summaries of statements made by state officials with responsibility for labor, unemployment insurance, child labor, and migrant labor, including statements and speeches made by the commissioner of labor. Also present are background data on these major issues and some administrative material dealing primarily with staffing and budgeting.

There are no restrictions regarding access to or use of this material.