Slight Slack

Subtracting November’s excellent unemployment rate of 4.6%, (tops since 8/07) from the November U6 rate of 9.3%, the most expansive measure of unemployment and underemployment (and the best since 4/08), is a quick way to measure labor force slack. That number is 4.7%. At the housing boom peak in 4/06 it was 3.4%. At 4.7%, there’s tops another 1.5 million people who want to work more; not much more slack.