Full employment

Full employment is the complete utilization of all factors of production in economics in a general sense. In a narrower sense, based on the labor factor of production, it stands for the employment of all industrious labor force and a balance on the labor market.

Definition

In the political discussion of full employment is most often seen in connection with the fight against unemployment. It is defined here as do not exceed a certain percentage of the unemployment rate, for example, less than two percent. In regions with an extremely high level of employment can actually unemployment rates of less than two percent are observed (eg South Tyrol with an unemployment rate of 1.9%).

William Henry Beveridge defined in 1945 in his work, full employment in a free society of full employment as a state in which the number of vacancies exceeds the number of unemployed, where he looked at this at a rate of three percent ( friktioneller ) unemployment as given.

Germany

In Germany the law is to promote the stability and growth of the economy since 1967, including a high level of employment among the objectives of government action. In West Germany the one- percent level was considered as the limit for full employment in times of economic boom and labor shortages yet. After the end of the 1950s, full employment was at an unemployment rate of two per cent to be achieved in principle. Brands of 4 %, 5 % or even 6 % were the meantime, in the 1990s the majority taken as an indication. In 2004, said the Social Democratic Economic and Labor Minister Wolfgang Clement, one must be set in Germany permanently to an unemployment rate of between three and five per cent, which would mean virtually full employment under the present conditions. The economist Rudolf Hickel provides full employment in Germany as reached when a state of at most about one million unemployed people would be reported. Some 400,000 of them are likely temporarily in the time of their search for a new job in the statistics show up and be about 600,000 people due to lack of qualification hard to place unemployed.

The Director of the Institute for Labor Market and Occupational Research, Joachim Möller, maintains full employment in the coming years is achievable. Reason is that many baby boomers retire, but few young people meet.

Austria

In Austria, an unemployment rate of less than 3.5 % is considered full employment.

Theories

According to Say's theorem is automatically created in a self- regulating market full employment, that is, if the state does not intervene by economic policies in the market and thereby limits the demand for labor.

According to Milton Friedman exists in any economy a conditional by structural factors and market imperfections specific natural rate of unemployment, the value of which could be reduced through structural reforms.

Theories on the possibility of full employment

According to the U.S. economist Jeremy Rifkin, which he explains in The End of Work in particular considers the work is long term disappear by the digital revolution. This raises the question, how a man should earn his livelihood.

Richard Buckminster Fuller noted in his book Critical Path (1981 ): Unemployment is based directly on the technical possibility of ephemerization. Similarly, Norbert Wiener expresses, a co-founder of cybernetics, who pointed out in 1947 that the progress in computer technology will trigger mass unemployment.

The French social philosopher André Gorz also says that for centuries more and more work will be taken over by machines. The effected thereby increase productivity leads to the fact that even with increasing production less manpower is needed. The idea of ​​full employment will an illusion. This thesis Gorz the reasons for its demand for a basic income.

With a view to developing into an oriented on gender mainstreaming society in which the individual has sufficient time for parenting and community involvement, a model of a revised goal of full employment with a reduced number of weekly hours is suggested, based approximately 30 hours per week or 25 to 30 hours per week.