Re: What is Full Employment?

["Forstater, Mathew" <ForstaterM@xxxxxxxx>]

I like Pasinetti's definition. In critiquing the Nairu, he writes that:

If we were to talk at all of a 'natural' level of employment, this could
not but be the level of full employment. In the present context, a
natural rate of unemployment would make no sense; or, if we like, it
couldn't but be equal to zero." (Pasinetti, 1993, p. 24)

Thus full employment means that no one who is ready and willing to work
for an appropriate wage is without a job (essentially Paul's definition
I think, and something like Vickrey's "chock-full employment"). This
also means zero involuntary part-time employment. There might be
included in this definition some very small amount of frictional
unemployment, but only voluntary frictional unemployment (some
individuals may choose to forego employment in order to devote full time
to job search). Thus we are concerned with true full employment of
labor, where every person ready and willing to work full-time has
full-time employment, and those ready and willing to work part-time have
as many hours of part-time employment as they desire.

There remains the question of whom and how many from among the "out of
the labor force" could or should be working.