Editing Full employment (section)

=== United States ===
The United States is, as a statutory matter, committed to full employment; the government is empowered to effect this goal.<ref>"A bill to establish and translate into practical reality the right of all adult Americans able, willing, and seeking to work to full opportunity for useful paid employment at fair rates of compensation;" [[Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act]] (1978)</ref> The relevant legislation is the [[Employment Act]] (1946), initially the "Full Employment Act," later amended in the [[Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act]] (1978). The 1946 act was passed in the aftermath of [[World War II]], when it was feared that demobilization would result in a depression, as it had following [[World War I]] in the [[Depression of 1920–21]], while the 1978 act was passed following the [[1973–75 recession]] and in the midst of continuing high inflation.

The law states that full employment is one of four economic goals, in concert with growth in production, [[price stability]], [[balance of trade]], and [[balanced budget|budget]], and that the US shall rely primarily on private enterprise to achieve these goals. Specifically, the Act is committed to an unemployment rate of no more than 3% for persons aged 20 or over, and not more than 4% for persons aged 16 or over (from 1983 onwards), and the Act expressly ''allows'' (but does not ''require'') the government to create a "reservoir of public employment" to affect this level of employment. These jobs are required to be in the lower ranges of skill and pay so as to not draw the workforce away from the private sector.

However, since the passage of this Act in 1978, the US has, {{as of|2017|lc=yes}}, only briefly achieved this level of employment on the national level in the late 1990s,<ref>{{cite web|title=Bureau of Labor Statistics Data|url=https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2018/article/great-recession-great-recovery.htm|website=Bureau of Labor Statistics|publisher=United States Department of Labor|access-date=15 October 2020|date=15 October 2020}}</ref> though some states have neared it or met it, nor has such a reservoir of public employment been created.