Every American who wants a job has one.
That’s the street-level understanding of “full employment.” With a jobless rate that fell to 3.9 percent last month, many economists -- including policy makers at the Federal Reserve -- say the U.S. is basically there.
On the surface, it’s an odd time to turn the government into an employer of last resort, hiring anyone who wants to work. But that’s what many Democrats are proposing, and not just on the party’s left. Could-be presidential candidates, including senators Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, are lining up behind versions of a jobs guarantee that may rank among the most radical economic plans debated in Congress for decades.
It would also be among the most expensive and disruptive, particularly for business -- part of the reason why the various draft bills likely won’t pass the current Congress and may struggle in future ones. Still, if politicians are betting that the once-fringe idea has traction, it’s because of doubts that underlie the upbeat labor-market headlines. What kind of jobs do fully-employed Americans have? And who’s left out of that picture?
‘Precarious, Low-Paid’
At the heart of the first question are issues of security, conditions and pay.
“We have had a growth in employment, but we have not had a growth in employment of decent jobs,” said William Darity, an economics professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, who’s contributed to job-guarantee proposals. “That’s the big issue. People have precarious work, low-paid work, no benefits or few benefits.”
In America’s recovery from the 2008 crisis, growth has skewed toward the wealthy. Wages have grown slowly by past standards, especially for low-paid workers. Jobs are also becoming less secure. A landmark study by Princeton’s Alan Krueger and Harvard’s Lawrence Katz found that all the net positions created in the decade through 2015 fell into the category broadly labeled the gig economy: contract-based, on-call, outsourced.
There are also 5 million part-timers who’d like to be full-time; 2.8 million people who lost a job last month or were on a temporary contract that ended; and 1.4 million who are looking for openings sporadically or have given up. The share of the working-age population that’s actually in work hasn’t recovered to the level it reached before the Great Recession, let alone its 2000 peak. Kevin Hassett, chairman of President Donald Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, said in November that more government hiring would help.
‘Fantasy-Land’