May Article of the Month

Our May article of the month is from our contested terrains series – a new initiative of the journal from 2023 that invites an academic to provoke, to provide stock-takes of sub-fields of areas of inquiry, to outline the implications of existing research, say on an imminent policy decision. After contributing to the series once before in his commentary on the missed opportunity for the RBA, John Quiggin is back here interrogating false uses of the term ‘full employment’. A foundational concept in the post-war Keynesian state, it is displaced through the period of monetarist ascension by the non-accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU). By 2023, Quiggin notes, the Albanese Government seeks to reconcile the two – the NAIRU retaining its centrality as an ambition for monetary policy, but a renewed, explicit commitment to full employment accompanying it as the goal of labour market governance nonetheless. Quiggin lays out the tensions in this paper and concludes that while they are not resolved in Albanese Government’s formulation, the reintroduction of the traditional/popular meaning of the term ‘full employment’ is a step in the right direction.