BO, or Before Obama, some economists contended that full employment was when only 5% of the available working aged populace were unemployed. I believe that’s because approximately 5% of the work-aged populace are essentially unemployable due to poor education and/or mental or physical deficiencies. So, if you took the work-aged population and subtract 5% that would represent America’s potential number for full employment. The difference between that number and the present number is the amount of true unemployment. There are ways to estimate this and I recall the Department of Labor used to produce these statistics. However, I no longer believe anything they say.
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