The Magic of a Full-Employment Economy
By focusing on jobs, Biden and Powell can generate long-lasting societal benefits.
A secret radical?
Photographer: Al Drago/The New York Times
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is nobody’s idea of a radical. But in his speech last week to the Economic Club of New York, he articulated an idea that upends generations of conventional wisdom and sets the stage not only for the Fed’s approach to the current economic crisis but also for President Joe Biden’s.
“A strong labor market that is sustained for an extended period can deliver substantial economic and social benefits,” Powell said, “including higher employment and income levels, improved and expanded job opportunities, narrower economic disparities, and healing of the entrenched damage inflicted by past recessions on individuals’ economic and personal well-being.”