We hear all the political rhetoric about jobs….jobs….jobs…..we listen to the prez tell us he wants to put Americans back to work……we hear the GOP tell us all about the evils of the Dems approach and that they will put all Americans to work if we just trust them with our vote…..everyone has heard it and has made their own decisions on who will put us mere mortals back to work….

Recently Mitt Romney after hearing the jobs report said that he was disappointed in the report and in particular the unemployment rate of 8.1% which he said that anything above 4% was unacceptable…….pause here for thought……..maybe Mr. Romney needs to take a refresher course in economics……for the US to have full employment it will need 5% unemployment…..I will say that I like his statement but an unemployment rate of 4% is just not gonna happen…..no matter how many promises he makes…….it just not gonna happen.  (Mitt has updated his prediction to 6% by the end of his first term)……..CBO has already stated that the rate should be 5.0% by 2016……

Apparently, both parties are trying to reach that magic idyllic number of full employment.  But what does that really mean?  Does it mean that every man and woman of employable age will have a job?  Only if you are not living in this world.  Full employment does not mean an employment level of 100%. In fact, it is estimated to be around 5% – the idea being that there is always a level of unemployment due to the existence of people who are between jobs or work seasonally.

If  full employment, as defined in economics, is an unemployment rate of 5% or lower…..that means that in today’s world we are at about 8%…..that is only 3 percentage points away from the official definition of “full employment”.

Basically, full employment means that the conditions in which all people who are looking for jobs can find one…..not that everyone has a job……

(In case you missed it…the redundancy was intentional…..just saying)