Neither the organizational forms of the centrals nor their authority and responsibility vis-à-vis the enterprises and ministries have been clearly defined or legally established. The resultant uncertainty, experimentation, and bureaucratic disharmony have created considerable confusion in the administration of industry, which has been inimical to the attainment of the efficiency goal. At the same time, a variety of factors, including a shortage of investment funds, an inflexible price structure, and the method of evaluating enterprise performance, have militated against the expansion of specialization. Industry officials believe that it may require from three to five years to resolve the organizational problems posed by the creation of the centrals and that many other problems will have to be solved before specialization can become a reality. Industrial combines, trusts, and centrals function under the jurisdiction of industrial ministries, of which there were eleven at the end of 1971 (see ch. 8). Industrial ministries have undergone an almost continuous process of reorganization. New ministries have been created; old ones, abolished; still others, amalgamated and split. Spheres of the ministries' activities have been reshuffled, and their internal structures have been modified--all in the interest of improving socialist industrial organization and raising the efficiency of production. One foreign observer remarked that, whenever something went wrong in the economy, reorganization in one form or another was undertaken in an effort to solve the problem through administrative means. LABOR The average number of persons employed in industry in 1969 was 1,980,000, or about 40 percent of total employment excluding those employed on collective farms. Industrial employment had increased by 725,000 persons in the 1960-69 period. Employment in construction grew more rapidly--from 372,000 persons in 1960 to almost 648,000 in 1969. At the end of 1969 women constituted 43 percent of employment in industry and less than 9 percent in construction. In industry, the proportion of women in blue-collar and white-collar jobs was about equal. In construction, however, women occupied one-third of the white-collar positions and only 5 percent of the blue-collar jobs. A distribution of employment by industry branches is available only for enterprises under the direct jurisdiction of the central government. Of these, machine building and metalworking absorbed 27 percent of the employed; fuels and metallurgy, 15 percent; forestry and woodworking, 15 percent; textile production, 12 percent; and chemicals and food processing, 7 percent each. Several less important industry branches accounted for another 11 percent of industrial employment, and an unlisted residue of fifty enterprises employing almost 100,000 persons, presumably constituting the defense industry, made up the balance of 6 percent.