Since 2008, it is clear to me, the unemployment rate has ...

Since 2008, it is clear to me, the unemployment rate has no longer served as a sufficient statistic for whether the labor market is loose or tight. We need to look, and look hard at those who do not have jobs and do not say that they are looking for jobs but who would take jobs if they existed. And we need to look very hard at hours: David Bell and David Blanchflower: Underemployment in the US and Europe : ���The most widely available measure of underemployment is the share of involuntary part-time workers in total employment. This column argues that this does not fully capture the extent of worker dissatisfaction with currently contracted hours. An underemployment index measuring how many extra or fewer hours individuals would like to work suggests that��the US and the UK are a long way from full employment, and that policymakers should not be focused on the unemployment rate in the years after a recession, but rather on the underemployment rate...

... The failure of wages to recover to their pre-recession growth rates in the developed world has been a continuing puzzle for economists.... The traditional explanation would be that wage growth was held back by high levels of unemployment. But... unemployment rates are low especially in the US (3.9% in August 2018) and the UK (4.2% in May 2018) and Germany (3.4% in July 2018).... In our interpretation of the concept, underemployment implies workers are off their labour supply curve...

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