UNEMPLOYMENT & UNCERTAINTY [1]

PUZZLING out how high or how low unemployment can go is a very, very complex undertaking.

Here are two things most economist can agree upon :  They want an economy where everyone who seeks a job can get one. Yet for the economy to be dynamic-

Some people will always be unemployed, at least temporarily as they move between jobs.

There exists, in theory at least, some  magic number for the unemployment rate that keeps those priorities in perfect balance, a bare minimum of joblessness that makes-

Room for people- to move around yet ensures that- nearly everyone who wants to can find work without inflation bubbling up.

Economists, as they are prone to do, have created an acronym for it : NAIRU ,  or the  *nonaccelerating inflation rate of unemployment*

The problem is, it is looking more and more as if we have no idea what this magic number is - an uncertainty that has huge economic consequences.

In America, for example, does the 4.1 percent jobless rate in January represent something lower this ''natural rate'' of unemployment and presage damaging inflation, as mainstream estimates have long suggested?

Or could it fall more - maybe a lot more - putting more people to work without negative side effects?

The new United States Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, showed the level of uncertainty facing top policy makers in congressional testimony recently when he said that-

He believes the economy is at full employment when the jobless rate is in the ''low 4s'' - that is, at current levels, ''but what that really means is it could be 5 and it could be  3.5''.

It might not seem like a huge range, but at 3.5 percent joblessness, 2.4 million more Americans would be working, rather than looking for a job unsuccessfully.

And that's before accounting for some of other benefits that a very low jobless rate might bring, like higher wages and more opportunities for those who have the hardest time finding jobs like-

Former prisoners and those who have recovered from drug addiction. The research and publishing continues to the 3 Parts.