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Full Employment,
Reimagined
The COVID-19 recession was the
shortest on record.
But to ensure that the current
rebound lasts—and that everyone benefits—policymakers
must reimagine
full employment.
As Roosevelt’s J.W. Mason, Mike
Konczal, and Lauren Melodia explain in a new issue brief, the
Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO’s) current definitions of the
potential labor force and maximum sustainable employment are flawed,
underestimating how many people could and would work in a tight labor
market and assuming that recent race, gender, and education gaps are
inevitable.
By correcting those assumptions,
they arrive at a new measure of full employment, and estimate that
with sustained demand, 28 million more workers could be drawn into the
labor force—but only with strong public investment.
“With the right policy choices . .
. the coming years could be remembered as the rebirth of a dynamic,
more egalitarian US economy—an extended period of wage gains and
capacity-boosting investment, with new spending pushing against the
productive potential of the economy,” they write.
Read more in “Reimagining
Full Employment: 28 Million More Jobs and a More Equal Economy”
and this fact
sheet, and catch up on coverage in Fortune
and Business
Insider.
High-Wage
Economy
“Because of smart policy choices,
jobs are returning more quickly than they usually do after recessions,
and workers are experiencing long-needed wage gains. This will feel
and be different from the last three recoveries—in 2007, 2001, and
1990—which started with slow and weak jobs numbers and growth. We are
beginning this recovery with a boom like the one we most recently saw
in the late 1990s, and we have the potential to go beyond what that
boom accomplished.”
Read more of Roosevelt’s new fact
sheet: “High-Wage
Economy: How Sustained Public Investment Can Reverse Decades of Wage
Stagnation.”
EconCon
2021
On October 6 and 7, join experts,
organizers, and advocates from Roosevelt and progressive organizations
across the country at EconCon
2021, a virtual
conference focused on building an economy that works for everyone.
Register
now.
What We’re
Reading
The
Pandemic Drove Women Out of the Workforce. Will They Come
Back? -
Politico
Heat
Waves Are Dangerous. Isolation and Inequality Make Them
Deadly -
Washington
Post
The
Next Test for Environmental Justice Policy? Defining “Disadvantaged
Communities.” -
Grist
How
Far Has America Actually Come Since the Promises of the George Floyd
Protests? -
Time
Democrats’
Divide on Voting Rights Widens as Biden Faces
Pressure -
New York
Times
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