What is this "full employment" you speak of? @EconomicPolicy

What is this "full employment" you speak of?

by digby

Not that very many people seem to give a damn, but we're nowhere near full employment. In January: 10.2 million job seekers were competing for 4 million job openings. 60% of job seekers weren't going to find job no matter what. (But by all means, let's cut benefits for these lazy sods. Don't they have the entrepreneurial energy to become criminals and prostitutes?)

EPI has issued a long report on the flailing job market with accompanying charts. Here's one:



This recovery's really roaring, isn't it? There's a lot of important information in this report, including policy recommendations that everyone should read.

I found these charts about how wrong the CBO projections have been to be particularly interesting:




They made their best guesses at the time. Nobody can accurately tell the future. But it's interesting that the deficit hawks live and die by the projections of debt as far as the eye can see, but are untroubled by the inaccuracy of the growth and unemployment projections.

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