"Employment conditions in the United States today, in the aftermath of the 2008–09 Wall Street collapse and worldwide Great Recession, remain disastrous—worse than at any time since the Depression of the 1930s.

Since Barack Obama entered office in January 2009, the official unemployment rate has averaged more than 9.5 percent, representing some fifteen million people in a labor force of about 154 million. By a broader definition, including people employed for fewer hours than they would like and those discouraged from looking for work, the unemployment rate has been far higher—16.5 percent, on average. Still worse, if we count people who have dropped out of the labor force, unemployment would rise to nearly 20 percent, or 30 million people, roughly twice the combined populations of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago..."

to read Robert Pollin's "Back to Full Employment" published in The Boston Review Jan/Feb 2011, click

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.1/pollin.php

Robert Pollin will speak on www.booktv.org Sunday March 17, 2013.

"Back to Full Employment"

Robert Pollin

About the Program

Robert Pollin argues that the U.S. government should be pushing for full employment (less than 4% unemployment), a policy goal which he says was abandoned in the 1970s when concerns about inflation began to take precedence. Prof. Pollin spoke at the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

Robert Pollin is a professor of economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author of "Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity."