I’ve come to believe that ‘are we at full employment?’ is the wrong question
“Yet, even at 3.9 percent unemployment, there are 6.3 million people unsuccessfully seeking work, and another 5 million who are working part-time but want full-time work. What’s up with that? It’s possible the discrepancy is due to these folks having personal limitations that make them un- or under-employable (surely, some persons of color in those numbers face employer discrimination). In other words, full employment doesn’t mean a jobless rate of zero. It means we’re left with only the structurally unemployed (those not helped by even very low unemployment) and the frictionally unemployed (people between jobs).”