Back to Full Employment (MIT Press, 2012) is a new book by Robert Pollin, UMass Amherst economics professor and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute. In the book, Pollin calls full employment, “the best tool for fighting poverty” and believes full employment would promote equality and social stability.
Robert Kuttner, co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, reviewed Pollin’s book for the political magazine. Kuttner writes, “It is the great contribution of Pollin…to restore full employment to its rightful place in the public discourse. In a very readable work of just 161 pages, Pollin covers the history, economics, and politics of the issue, and proposes an entirely persuasive program for getting there. He means his title in both senses- back to a full-employment economy and back to this cornerstone of progressive politics.”
Pollin’s research centers on macroeconomics, conditions for low-wage workers in the U.S. and globally, the analysis of financial markets, and the economics of building a clean-energy economy in the U.S. Pollin delivered the 2009 Philip Gamble Memorial Lecture; his talk is titled “The Economic Logic and Moral Imperative of Full Employment.”