The Anomaly of U-3: Why the Unemployment Rate is Overstating the Strength of Today’s Labor Market

Nick Buffie

CEPR Reports and Issue Briefs from Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)

Abstract: By examining the historical relationship between the unemployment rate and alternative measures of labor market slack, it is determined that today’s labor market has far more slack than is typically associated with an unemployment rate of 5.0 percent. It is therefore unlikely that the economy is at or near full employment.

Keywords: employment; unemployment; unemployment rate; slack; U-3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E E2 E24 J (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2015-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab, nep-mac and nep-pke
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:epo:papers:2015-24

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