ALL IS NOT WELL ON THE MISSOURI WATCH

Anyone who has ever stood early-morning watch on a ship at sea knows that it is one of the loneliest jobs of a lifetime. With no one to keep you company, you survey a void that is unbelievably vast, looking into sheer blackness that refuses to yield up a single image, sensing all the while that beyond the nothingness there is something urgently requiring recognition. For some time we have been feeling that sense of early-morning watch, unable to see yet burdened by a gnawing feeling that our beloved state and its 5-plus million citizens were about to be confronted with a crisis of serious proportions. That crisis is one of unemployment, the absence of job opportunities, the lack of viable chances to earn a living.

A watch at sea involves listening as well as looking, and there are few sounds in this winter of 1992 to indicate our fears are justified. The reports from the Missouri Division of Employment Security would seem to refute our concern. Indeed, the division's statistics are the antithesis of our nightmares: the state has fewer jobless than the nation as a whole according to the latest summary sheets. We have to keep reminding ourself, however, that the report, helpful as it is, remains skewed by a change in counting the unemployed that was instituted during the Reagan years. Not only is the DES unable to keep track of the jobless who have gone off its rolls, it has no idea how many Missourians, after looking months and even years for a real job, have simply given up the pursuit. We also have to remember that part of the monthly jobless report for Missouri is no longer compiled in Jefferson City but in Washington. In recent years the U.S. Department of Labor has become so politicized that much of what it says officially can be discounted intellectually. This has something to do with the old saw about facts and liars.

There are several reasons we are concerned about our state's future, not the least being that few persons in Jefferson City are giving much thought to it. There are some academics over at Old Mizzou who worry about the lack of planning for tomorrow, and a whole handful of men and women who work daily to improve it at the economic development offices in the Truman Building, and a few legislators here and there who have a feeling the state isn't doing all it should to foster jobs. To be perfectly frank about it, many of those so-called business associations located on the fringe of the Capitol are a lot more interested in protecting the status quo and making sure business doesn't pay its share of state taxes than they are in creating new job slots in Nodaway County or St. Louis or Cedar County.

Some might answer that our job-creation worries are merely the result of the current business recession, that many of these concerns will be resolved when America returns once more to Happy Days Are Here Again. That might have been the case a decade ago when we were experiencing the worst recession since World War II, but when that downturn was over the country went back to the Cold War, a massive armed services organization, a defense industry that was America's largest business, and a constant escalation of federal deficits and public debt, all of which passed unquestionably as prosperity. It wasn't.

America will not return to the Cold War after this recession because the old Soviet Union simply disappeared in the interim. With no more Evil Empire biting at our heels, more and more politicians in Washington are looking for the demise of the defense industry to provide the financing required to install a more normalized economy that has its base in consumer goods, traditional manufacturing and restoration of the infrastructure. We're not at all reassured that advocates of this Brave New World have the foggiest idea how to produce it, much less finance it while we're struggling to pay off the budget excesses of the past. We have yet to make our first down payment.

If the Cold War is over, a fact even some in the Pentagon are now willing to admit, there doesn't seem much reason to keep hundreds of thousands of soldiers abroad facing enemies that don't exist. That's why in the months ahead Washington plans to cut the armed forces by some 125,000 men and women, with more to come later. ~Lots of these soon-to-be-discharged are talented young men and women, many are highly trained, cream of the crop workers. General Motors plans to lay off 74,000 workers, all trained, in the next 36 months. Ford and Chrysler plan more layoffs. The list of state companies completing or readying employee cutbacks reads like the Missouri 500: McDonnell Douglas, Monsanto, Armco, Southwestern Bell and Brown Shoe Co. are just a few. Emerson Electric is building its second plant in Mexico (the country, not the town in Missouri), soon to be joined by Zenith and others.

It's assumed that when we pass through this current recession, good times will be waiting for us. The politicians tell us this, and you know how perceptive they are. You bet! But the economists we talk to aren't saying this. They say Missouri isn't positioned to absorb new workers, create new jobs and develop new industries. They worry that no one is worrying.

Anyone care to join us on the early-morning watch? It sure gets lonely~ talking to ourself.