Getting Back to Full Employment with Dean Baker and Jared Bernstein

While the media and politicians hype debt crises, the real American economic crisis is continuing, devastating, high unemployment. In addition to the millions who are unemployed, the weakness of the labor market has made it impossible for most workers to achieve real wage gains. As a result the benefits of the economic growth we have seen have gone overwhelmingly to the richest 1 percent.

In Getting Back to Full Employment, Jared Bernstein, formerly the Chief Economist and Economic Adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, and Dean Baker, one of the first economists to recognize and warn of the risks of the stock and housing bubbles, focus readers’ attention where it should be: getting more Americans jobs. They show how the economic well-being of a large swath of American workers depends on the unemployment rate. Particularly in an era of historically high inequality, full employment would provide workers with the bargaining power needed to secure higher incomes and a fair share of the economy’s growth.

Bernstein and Baker also point out another critical side effect of full employment: lower budget deficits and debt. In addition, they recommend policies to boost growth and get the unemployment rate down to a level where far more workers have a fighting chance of getting ahead.