Despair at Full Employment: The Urgency of a Fairer Labor Market
There is a discrepancy between the alleged strong labor market with full employment and the many signs of anguish among the low-skilled members of the labor force. But this author argues that the official unemployment statistics are woefully inadequate and that the real unemployment rate in the fall of 2018 was closer to 7.4 percent of the labor force. Among those without a high school diploma, it was twice as high. The author argues that we need to restructure the labor market.