The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes six alternative indicators of labor underutilization, ranging from the long-term unemployed (U-1) and the standard unemployment rate (U-3) to a measure that includes all unemployed, involuntary part-time, and ‘marginally attached’ workers (U-6). These...

Generous unemployment benefits lie at the heart of the conventional explanation for persistent high unemployment. The effects of benefit generosity are more ambiguous in a broader behavioral framework in which workers get substantial disutility from unemployment controlling for income, and know...