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. Pete Bohmer
Doug Henwood wrote:
Eugene Coyle wrote:
I disagree with the assertion in this piece that in the Vietnam days unemployment was "at rock bottom" and with the attendant assertion that "the economic engines were already revving hot when Vietnam spending slammed on the accelerator."
The unemployment rate in the U.S. was 4% or less - mostly less - from 1966 through 1969. Over the same period, capacity utilization in manufacturing was 88% - it's never gotten anywhere near that since. Short of socialist revolution, how do you get numbers any tighter than that?
Doug
