The 20th century British economist William Beveridge stated that an unemployment rate of 3 % was full employment. For the United States, economist William T. Dickens found that full - employment unemployment rate varied a lot over time but equaled about 5.5 percent of the civilian labor force during the 2000s. Recently, economists have emphasized the idea that full employment represents a "range '' of possible unemployment rates. For example, in 1999, in the United States, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) gives an estimate of the "full - employment unemployment rate '' of 4 to 6.4 %. This is the estimated unemployment rate at full employment, plus & minus the standard error of the estimate.
full employment in the us economy means that
4 to 6.4 %