(1) In recent decades, the economy has stopped 
working for working families in the United States. 
(2) Despite significant gains in workers’ pro-
ductivity and gross domestic product over the past 
30 years, workers have seen their wages stagnate 
and sometimes fall. 
(3) The benefits of the powerful economy of the 
United States have gone almost entirely to the rich-
est people in society, which has created a growing 
gap between the wealthy and the rest of our country. 
(4) Such widening disparities are unhealthy for 
our democracy and unhealthy for the broad swath of 
working families who are unable to afford to pay 
their rent or buy a home, save for their children’s 
higher education, or afford the basic necessities to 
live a dignified and full life. 
(5) One major factor contributing to this grow-
ing economic crisis has been the lack of full employ-
ment in the economy of the United States. 
(6) Too many workers struggle to find jobs, 
and the jobs that are available often do not pay a 
good wage. 
(7) In the absence of a tight labor market and 
genuine full employment, workers are at the mercy 
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of their employers and cannot ask for raises or leave 
for better job opportunities. 
(8) As a result of workers’ decreased bargaining 
power, corporate profits and executive compensation 
have accounted for an increasingly large share of 
gross domestic product, leaving the large majority of 
workers in the United States behind. 
(9) Since 1980, the economy of the United 
States has had an excessively high level of unem-
ployment 70 percent of the time, according to the 
Congressional Budget Office’s official estimate of 
full employment (that is, the nonaccelerating infla-
tion rate of unemployment, or ‘‘NAIRU’’). 
(10) This contrasts with the 1949–1979 era, 
when the economy of the United States was func-
tioning below full employment only 31 percent of the 
time. 
(11) This persistently weak labor market has 
had tremendous consequences not only for the unem-
ployed and underemployed, but also for employed 
workers who have been unable to negotiate for high-
er wages and better working conditions, including 
the following examples: 
(A) Since 1979, although economy-wide 
productivity has grown by 64.3 percent, wom-
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en’s median wages have risen by only 20.6 per-
cent and men’s median wages have actually fall-
en by 8.9 percent, and the statistics for Black 
and Hispanic workers are even worse than for 
White workers. 
(B) Workers’ share of corporate income 
has shrunk significantly, from 82.3 percent dur-
ing the full employment economy of 2000 to 
75.5 percent today, a decline that means that 
workers will earn $535 billion less this year 
than they would have had the share remained 
stable, or approximately $3,770 per worker this 
year. 
(C) Between 2002 and 2014, inflation-ad-
justed hourly wages for the bottom seven deciles 
(that is, 70 percent of the workforce of the 
United States) fell, showing that wage stagna-
tion is not limited to low-income families. 
(D) Even highly educated workers are not 
thriving in this economy; wages for college-edu-
cated and advanced-degree workers fell in 2013 
and 2014, a time of economic growth for the 
economy at large. 
(12) Congress has mandated that the Board of 
Governors of the Federal Reserve System pursue a 
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dual mandate of ‘‘maximum employment’’ and ‘‘sta-
ble prices’’, which the Board of Governors has inter-
preted to mean full employment that is consistent 
with an inflation rate of 2 percent. 
(13) Since the Great Recession, the economy of 
the United States has consistently had an unemploy-
ment rate higher than the Board of Governors of the 
Federal Reserve System’s NAIRU and an inflation 
rate below the 2-percent target; consistently missing 
both targets has caused untold harm to hundreds of 
millions of people. 
(14) Today’s headline unemployment rate un-
derstates the continued weakness of the economy of 
the United States, including the following examples: 
(A) Long-term unemployment is elevated. 
(B) Involuntary part-time employment re-
mains very high, indicating a large pool of 
workers who would prefer to be given more 
hours. 
(C) The portion of prime-age adults who 
are in the labor force remains depressed, be-
cause so many millions of people have given up 
looking for work. 
(15) Although there is no empirical evidence 
that an inflation rate of 3 or 4 percent would be 
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harmful, or would be difficult to maintain at a stable 
rate, many observers believe that the Board of Gov-
ernors of the Federal Reserve System actually treats 
its 2-percent inflation target as a ceiling. 
(16) Over recent decades and even today, re-
fusal by the Board of Governors of the Federal Re-
serve System to tolerate any inflation means that it 
has consistently raised interest rates prematurely 
during recoveries, preventing the economy from 
reaching full employment. 
(17) Inflation remains below the already con-
servative 2-percent target of the Board of Governors 
of the Federal Reserve System and shows no signs 
of accelerating uncontrollably. 
(18) During the late 1990s, the economy of the 
United States began to reach genuine full employ-
ment, with an unemployment rate of below 4 per-
cent, which had tremendous benefits for the vast 
majority of people, including— 
(A) higher wages for everyone, including 
those at the bottom of the income ladder; 
(B) robust wage gains for African-Ameri-
cans and Hispanics, which shrank the tremen-
dous racial disparities in pay and wealth; and 
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