Re: the concept of overemployment

["Eric Miller" <ewmiller@xxxxxxxx>]

The use of "overemployment" sounds like progressives trying to use a
classical term to critique high levels of employment on the belief that it
fuels growth & consumerism.  (Whether this does is another debate)

Classical folk who believe in a "natural level" of employment are quick to
defend unemployment being below the "natural rate" by insisting it is
"overemployment."  When I took my profs to task over this they would come up
with some hokey arguments that it was because people are working overtime
(even though by definition, you can't say this since working overtime
doesn't directly reduce the unemployment rate!) and other equally spurious
reasons.

In classical economic models the only way to explain unemployment falling
below so-called "natural rates" would be to insist that it was short-term
and that, over time, it is balanced by unemployment in excess of "natural"
rates during recessions...

HV: I suggest that you concern yourself not with "over" employment but with
mismatches between how much people want to work and how much they actually
do.  Not sure what to call this, but don't call it overemployment.  At the
aggregative/macro level, it sounds counter-intuitive to have "over" and "un"
employment concurrently.

Better to insist that there is a tragic mismatch between people's
*individual* desired level of employment versus what they have.  That way,
it's possible to concurrently have some people saying they work "too much"
while others are short.  Then you can look at the structural factors (like
ability or inability to refuse overtime given labour laws or individual or
collective agreements) and personal ones (like how much $ people figure they
need versus how much they're able to get from having only 1 job with crappy
pay, etc).  Then at the macro level, you could have (an) indicator(s) of the
mismatch, with an absence of mismatch being under the special classical case
where people freely work only as many hours at their optimal jobs so as to
meet their own optimal ends that don't include holding $ for $ sake (since
this can cause involuntary unemployment).  Then policy goals would be not
just that everyone has the right and ability to gain employment at a
liveable wage (a la Vickery) but that there be little mismatch too.

- Eric

> Here is some information on the subject of overemployment I
> found using the
> search engine google.
>
> Harry Veeder