Housing & Jobs

The war effort was a powerful stimulus for industrial development. On the home front, millions of men and women worked in wartime production. Many relocated from small towns and farms to major metropolitan areas, causing a severe housing shortage. When hostilities ended in 1945, some people worried about competing with returning veterans for a shrinking number of jobs.

Demobilization raised two basic questions: where would the ex-GIs live and where would they work? The GI Bill spoke directly to both issues.

Increasing marriage and birth rates caused a great demand for suburban single-family houses. Many veterans bought new homes with low-interest mortgages backed by the federal government.

Employment was addressed in several ways. The most controversial provision of the GI Bill was the 52-20 Club, named after the weekly $20 payments that unemployed veterans were entitled to receive for up to 52 weeks. Few veterans actually remained jobless for an entire year, and by the time this benefit expired, only one fifth of allocated funds had been spent.

Veterans were also eligible to receive assistance in job placement from state and local agencies and a stipend plus expenses if they enrolled in approved vocational, on-the-job, or farm training programs. They could also obtain federally subsidized small business loans. In North Carolina, many veterans who drew "start-up" allowances were farmers.

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Credit: Photo by Albert Barden, Albert Barden Photograph Collection, Non-Textual Materials Unit, North Carolina State Archives.

A house under construction on Oberlin Road, Raleigh, September 1947.

By 1959 more than five million veterans had realized the American dream of becoming homeowners – thanks to low-interest mortgages backed by the federal government. These "VA loans" left their mark on the cityscape. The mass construction of private houses fueled suburban growth, stimulated the banking industry, and boosted demand for consumer goods.
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Credit: Special Collections Research Center, NCSU Libraries.

"I secured a job as Assistant Teacher on the Veterans Farm program, and I kept this job for almost two years. I liked this job because I was in the field most of the time, and came in personal contact with the rural population. The men I worked with lived in hamlets, rural neighborhoods, and on isolated farmsteads. . . .

My wife came from a broken family and she wanted me to go back to college, because she knew how hard it is for one person to raise a family without a college education. I resigned from my job in August 1948 and entered college at Lees McRae in September of that year. It was very hard for me after being out of school for eight years, but I studied hard and made a B average. While attending this college I also ran a small dairy of my father's, and I formed an All-Star basketball club in which I had an important social role. After finishing at Lees McRae I decided to come to N.C. State College and major in Dairy Husbandry."

– Excerpted from an autobiographical essay written by Thomas P. Dellinger Jr. for Rural Sociology 201, December 1949.
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Credit: Agromeck, 1952.

Thomas P. Dellinger's senior portrait in the 1952 Agromeck.
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Credit: Farmers' Co-Operative Exchange (FCX) Photograph Collection, Non-Textual Materials Unit, North Carolina State Archives.

Interior view of a drugstore and sundry shop in Edgecombe County, North Carolina, March 1948.

During the first three postwar years, the Veterans Administration backed 140,000 small business and farm loans across the nation.
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Credit: Special Collections Research Center, NCSU Libraries.

Welders in training.

Although the GI Bill is often associated with higher education, more than twice as many veterans used the benefits to complete high school or to receive vocational, farm, or on-the-job training. Shown here are Jim Spainhour of Greensboro and Robert L. Crowell of Marblehead, Massachusetts, in the welding shop at the Morehead City Technical Institute, May 1949. NC State's pioneer program in engineering extension offered a one-year, shop-oriented course to students interested in vocational training.
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Credit: Special Collections Research Center, NCSU Libraries.

A class in naval architecture at the Morehead City Technical Institute, 1947.

 
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Credit: Technician, February 22, 1946.

"On-the Job Training For War Veterans" from the Technician, 1946.

 

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