What does it mean to return to full employment?

French president Emmanuel Macron has set an economic policy target of getting France back to full employment within five years. But what does it mean to return to full employment? We can think of three increasingly valid definitions. Reducing the unemployment rate to the level of the structural unemployment rate (the unemployment rate that can be obtained by increasing activity without carrying out structural reforms). However, France is probably already very close to this situation. Reducing the structural unemployment rate, which is high in France, to a similar level to that seen in other countries (United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Canada). This would require an examination of the causes of France’s high structural unemployment rate. Defining full employment not as a low structural unemployment rate, but as a high employment rate. The example of the United States shows that the unemployment rate can be low at the same time as the employment rate declines. Moreover, it is a high employment rate that reduces poverty and inequality and provides higher per capita income and tax revenues. This raises the question of the causes of France’s low employment rate. Altogether, it is to be hoped that Emmanuel Macron will adopt the most appropriate definition of full employment, i.e. an employment rate in France as high as in the best-performing countries in this respect .