Quote

In addition to joblessness, of course, by the working of supply and demand, when you have a larger number of people unemployed, wages do not rise at the normal level, so that we had last year a drop in real wages.

Unemployment determination in a modern economy was the main subject area of my research from the mid-1960s to the end of the 1970s and again from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s.

A while ago I did a story comparing the change in employment rates in recessions in the U.S. and in Europe, and what I found was that America fired a lot of people and rehired a lot of people faster than Europe. That difference is disappearing, and that is a problem.

A study of the history of wages back through the years indicates clearly that when the cost-of-living rises appreciably wages have shortly been adjusted upward also.

The unemployment rate went down as I was governor of Massachusetts. We were losing jobs every month when I came into the state.

Moreover, statistics can be deceiving: the growth of jobs in the US in the 90s was due to many part-time jobs, with no benefits and generally low pay.

Three years after the four deepest previous recessions began - in 1953, 1957, 1973 and 1981 - employment was on average 4.7% higher than the pre-recession peak.

What we're talking about is the price of goods, all goods, in terms of money. That has nothing to do with unemployment, except for the fact that you get fewer goods. And when you have more money and fewer goods, the amount of dollars per good goes up. It goes up because there are fewer goods and it goes up because there is more money.

When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.

The 1930s had been a time of tremendous economic distress. And the unemployment rate was enormously high by any historic standard.