Could treaty construction quotas have preserved shipyard employment?

Could the Washington treaty have limited batches of standard ships while easing unemployment and controlling escalation?

Possibly, but the actual negotiators did not fully develop that kind of construction-and-employment mechanism.

One alternative to an abrupt construction halt was to limit how many standard ships each navy could build at one time. Such a rule might have restrained costs while preserving skilled employment and a steady replacement rhythm. Prewar advocates such as Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had thought seriously about naval limitation, but neither shaped the Washington settlement directly. The negotiators inherited the idea of a naval treaty without necessarily developing every industrial and force-management consequence.