A spectacular population increase has accompanied the west coast’s industrial revolution. The Portland metropolitan area showed a 31 per cent increase in population since 1940; the Seattle area shows an increase in population for the same period of 200,000; and an estimated 1,500,000 people have entered California since 1940. Since most industrial activity on the west coast is confined to the manufacture of aircraft and the construction of ships, sharp curtailment of employment is threatened in the post-war period. With a population increase of 14 per cent, California, for example, faces the problem of shifting 1,500,000 workers from war activities to civilian jobs after the war. . . .
The typical white defense migrant is a young man, twenty-five years of age or younger, married, from a small town or rural area in the Pacific Northwest, anxious to settle in the area, and primarily interested in industrial employment in the post-war period. A study made recently in the Kaiser yards in Portland indicates that only 23.6 per cent of the migrants expressed a definite intention to leave after the war; that only a very few have maintained economic ties elsewhere or have jobs to which they might return; that considerable numbers have purchased property in the area; that a majority have their families with them; and that 86 per cent must find new employment immediately after their present employment terminates.
