Some Implications of Full-Employment Policy

1946 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 258-265
Author(s):  
Albert L. Meyers
Keyword(s):  
Full Employment ◽  
Employment Policy

Unemployment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Tomlinson
Keyword(s):  
Full Employment ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Employment Policy ◽  
Conservative Government

This chapter examines the underpinnings of full employment policy, and the popular understandings of economic life that went along with it. It examines how and why the defeat of unemployment achieved such importance, and how the policy was understood and represented from the 1940s onwards. Next it looks at the tensions surrounding this policy aim from the 1970s, and how it unravelled in the 1980s. The downgrading of the significance given to full employment was accomplished by a variety of strategies to reshape understanding, from the questioning of the ‘reality’ behind official enumeration of unemployment in the early 1970s through to the revival of ‘scrounger’ narratives. It looks at how the Conservative government after 1979 reacted to the surge in unemployment, and how they tried to establish a new popular understanding of the causes of job losses.

III. British Plans

1945 ◽  
Vol 39 (6) ◽  
pp. 1137-1147
Author(s):  
W. Hardy Wickwar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
The United States ◽  
White Paper ◽  
Productive Capacity ◽  
Employment Policy ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Government

The United Kingdom has gone considerably farther than the United States in the acceptance of full employment as one of the prime aims of government policy. There is a widespread feeling that it may also have gone farther in devising governmental machinery for the realization of this aim. On both counts—the end and the means—the present trend in the United Kingdom merits attention in the United States and other countries.Official endorsement of full employment as a proper end for governmental policy dates back to 1944. The much-quoted white paper on Employment Policy was presented to Parliament by Lord Woolton, Minister of Reconstruction in the Churchill coalition, a few days before D-day. It began with the unequivocal statement: “The Government accept as one of their primary aims and responsibilities the maintenance of a high and stable level of employment after the war.” Shortly afterwards, at the conclusion of a three-day debate, the House of Commons passed a resolution moved by Laborite Ernest Bevin, then Minister of Labor and National Service, and supported on the side of the Conservatives by Sir John Anderson as Chancellor of the Exchequer: “That this House … welcomes the declaration of His Majesty's Government….” At no time later has this basic commitment been placed in doubt.Acceptance of full employment in business circles might be illustrated by a number of authoritative pronouncements made in the middle of the war. These include a pamphlet entitled The Problem of Unemployment, issued by Lever Brothers and Unilever Limited at the beginning of 1943. Here it was clearly argued that irregularity of capital investment was the principal cause of unemployment; that the profit motive had proved an insufficient guide in the extension of productive capacity; and that it was the task of government to regularize the incentive to investment by the use of indirect controls.

Liberal Economists and the British Welfare State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Peden
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
New Right ◽  
Employment Policy ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Considerable Impact ◽  
The 1960S

The chapter explores changing liberal attitudes to the welfare state. Hayek shared much common ground with Beveridge and Keynes in the 1940s, but saw postwar expansion of welfare services combined with inflationary full-employment policy as a threat to individual liberty. Other liberal economists thought Hayek exaggerated the threat, but were nevertheless critical of state monopoly in welfare provision and were keen to maintain the independence and individual responsibility of citizens. From the 1960s neoliberal ideas that had originally been conceived within the Liberal Party became associated with Conservatism and the New Right. The New Right had a considerable impact on housing policy and set an agenda for free-market alternatives in the provision of health and education services.

Urban School-leavers and Unemployment in China

1983 ◽  
Vol 93 ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Philip Emerson
Keyword(s):  
Social Problem ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Strategic Decision ◽  
Employment Policy ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Third ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
The Great Leap Forward ◽  
Party Congress

What is unemployment in China? For 20 years after the Great Leap Forward was officially credited with having achieved full employment in 1958, this question could not even be raised in the People's Republic of China. From the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 and up to 1958 unemployment problems had been prominently featured in the Chinese press. In 1978 unemployment again became a topic of discussion. The reappearance of unemployment as an acceptable subject of debate was a further indication of how much of Maoist ideology had been officially discarded since the death of Mao Zedong two years earlier. One Chinese summed up these changes as they related to employment problems in this way2: Employment is a major economic as well as a major social problem. But from 1958 until the destruction of the “gang of four,” problems of employment virtually constituted a taboo which could not be discussed in public. After the smashing of the “gang of four” and especially after the third plenary session of the 11th Party Congress (December 1978), a new employment policy was decided on. This was a strategic decision of immense significance.

IV. Party Government and Employment Policy

1945 ◽  
Vol 39 (6) ◽  
pp. 1147-1157 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. E. Schattschneider
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Employment Policy ◽  
Party Government ◽  
The Public ◽  
Stormy Weather ◽  
The Government ◽  
New Policies

The prediction that full employment will have a great political future is based on the fact that economic policies of this kind reach large segments of the public not previously accustomed to political action or only recently made aware of the potentialities of politics. Only the war itself has served to remind these relatively non-political people as urgently of the new importance of the government to every one as they are likely to be reminded by the establishment of the principle that public authority and public resources ought to be used to promote or produce sixty million jobs. What people do about the government depends on what they think the government is able to do. Therefore, the idea that the government is now able to protect people against the most dreaded of the manifestations of economic instability is almost certain to have a great impact on the political behavior of millions of people, many of whom have never before been drawn into the orbit of politics.Moreover, unless the millenium is here, it seems probable that a prolonged and disturbing controversy over employment policies is in the making. In fact, a major political conflict over these policies can probably be avoided only by the abandonment of the whole project, i.e., by conceding the argument that full employment is none of the business of the government. The friends of the new policies are, therefore, in the position of having to pray for stormy weather.

scholarly journals Labor Market Policy in Polish Regions on the Basis of the Wielkopolska and Warmia and Mazury Regions (in the Years 2011–2016)

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-18
Author(s):  
Wacław Jarmołowicz ◽  
Magdalena Knapińska
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Policy Implementation ◽  
Regional Economy ◽  
Price Level ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
Employment Policy ◽  
Labor Market Policy ◽  
Market Policy ◽  
Economic Relationships ◽  
Economic Stabilization

While implementing economic policy, the State concentrates on four main goals related to economic stabilization referring to economic growth: a stable price level, a balance in the economic relationships with other states and the implementation of a full employment policy. Employment policy and labor market policy are crucial aspects of these actions. In the current study, attention has been paid to the very differentiation between the notions of employment policy and labor market policy, special emphasis has been placed on the latter as it directly influences the level and structure of unemployment in the national and regional economy. Another important part of the study presents particular aspects of the policy implementation against the phenomenon of unemployment in the studied regions in the period 2011–2016. The wielkopolskie voivodship and the warmińsko-mazurskie voivodship have been chosen as the study subjects. These regions significantly differ regarding their level of unemployment, but also in terms of their labor market policy implementation.

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