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Comment by MuffinFlavored | Hacker News Reader

> but it's not full employment by any means.

I could be wrong/this is probably ignorant to say but I'm pretty sure we don't want "full employment".

The fuller employment, the more supply there is for jobs of all wage groups (low, medium, high, etc.)

Employers were having a hard time finding people who wanted to work during COVID for a variety of reasons. This lead to a good think for workers who did want to work: $12/hr jobs became $17/hr (rough example) due to low supply, high demand.

The fuller employment, the less need employers have to compete for workers on wages.

Just a thought...

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Full employment means 100% of people eligible to work are working. (0% unemployment rate)

it does not mean employers filling all their open job requests.

> Full employment means 100% of people eligible to work are working. (0% unemployment rate)

If you did a 30 second search you'd find that's not correct.

>Full employment is a situation in which there is no cyclical or deficient-demand unemployment.[1] Full employment does not entail the disappearance of all unemployment, as other kinds of unemployment, namely structural and frictional, may remain. [...]

>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.[5] 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 or minus the standard error of the estimate.[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_employment

see my reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38356788

Doesn't "full employment" mean there are more jobs than there are workers? That seems like a good thing for workers because it leads to employers competing for workers (similar to what you said).

Your statement that "the fuller employment, the less need employers have to compete for workers on wages" confuses me.

> Doesn't "full employment" mean there are more jobs than there are workers?

I don't see how that's unusual or problematic: There will always be more jobs than workers, because "jobs" are really just wishes unless they get filled, and there's no limit on wishes or their unreasonableness.

I mean, I can confidently promise a job, right now, for anyone to do an in-person walking survey of the surface of Pluto for 1 cent per day--employee is responsible for their own transportation. Even in a "full employment" economy, that 1-more-job-than-workers can linger indefinitely, unfulfilled.

If we modify it to "more fair jobs than workers", that doesn't help much because it's a pretty subjective evaluation and some would say "fair" is itself dependent on the supply and demand.

see my reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38356788

>The fuller employment, the less need employers have to compete for workers on wages.

I think you have that backwards.

5% unemployment, lots of job openings, employers desperate to hire, more inclined/forced to pay higher wages

3% unemployment, more people taking up the fixed amount of job openings, less job openings, employers less desperate to hire

Am I missing something?

>Am I missing something?

I think so. Your causality is wrong.

Strong economy -> More demand for employees -> Low unemployment Weak economy -> Less demand for employees -> Higher unemployment

Thanks for taking the time to explain. I checked with ChatGPT and it said I am wrong as well.

Maybe I am thinking in the wrong terms?

What would you define what we had in COVID?

High demand for employees... was that because of low or high unemployment in your mind?

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