The Soviet labour force in the fifties

This note was originally written in November 1959 for use at a seminar. At that date neither of the major statistical handbooks issued in the latter part of that year (Narodnoye khozyaistvo SSSR v 1958 g. and Narodnoye khozyaistvo RSFSR v 1958 g.) was available to the writer, nor of course was the press release of 4 February 1960, which supplies the sex‐ and age‐groupings of the population as at the 1959 census, the specific death‐rates for 1939 and 1959, and the estimated age‐grouping for the notional Soviet population of 1939. Strictly speaking, therefore, the note is already out of date, since the data on which it is based call for some revision. But since the output of Soviet data is so substantial at the present time, this charge could be brought against almost any work in this field; and in any case it is hoped that readers will agree that the revisions required to the author's estimates are of comparatively small dimensions. Some of the revisions are briefly indicated within square brackets, and the writer is at present engaged in a more detailed study of the labour force which will appear in a later issue of this journal. The justification for offering it to readers at this juncture lies basically in the methods used, since these appear in the light of the census press release to be fundamentally sound.