While the overall unemployment rate was slightly below 4% in the late 1960's, I remember that in a study of several black communities in major urban centers in 1967, the official unemployment rate there was 10% or more and the underemployment rate, which the labor department calculated at that time, was well over 20%. There was hardly full employment in these communities. When we get overly influenced by the official statistics and ideology, we sometimes deny the lived reality of many people.
I feel like I have this conversation about once a month, so maybe I should just program this into a script. Yes, sure, there are many flaws with the official unemployment rate. But they're probably more or less consistent over time, so the fact that the official rate was at an all-time low in the late 1960s suggests the labor market was as tight as it's ever been. The rate is not a measure of human deprivation, it's a measure of slack in the job market. And as everyone who's ever read Kalecki's great article on the political aspects of full employment knows, that couldn't last.
Doug
