Janet Yellen Quotes

History teaches that the level of unemployment is not as important as whether the rate's going down.

The rich countries seem to need 5 or 6 percent unemployment to make the economy hum.

We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant.

I define genuine full employment as a situation where there are at least as many job openings as there are persons seeking employment, probably calling for a rate of unemployment, as currently measured, of between 1 and 2 percent.

A lot of joblessness in the black community doesn't seem to be reachable through fiscal and monetary policies. People have not been drawn into the labor market even during periods of economic recovery.

The periods of unemployment accompanying depression in the business cycle ... present a challenge to all our claims to progress, humanity, and civilization.

The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes.

It was the unemployment that was the hardest to bear. The jobless millions were like an embolism in the nation's vital circulation; and while their indisputable existence argued more forcibly than any text that something was wrong with the system, the economists wrung their hands and racked their brains and called upon the spirit of Adam Smith, but could offer neither diagnosis or remedy.

Treating unemployment as a national problem is almost always a mistake. Employment trends vary dramatically by race, geography, gender and level of education. But none of that is reflected in the all-encompassing unemployment rate, and hence policies informed only by that number are bound to fall short.

I ask to be judged on the issue of unemployment.

You see, you can't put joblessness in a jail cell.

It takes about two and a half percent growth just to keep unemployment stable.

We can't afford as a nation - not because of money but because of our social fabric - to have large numbers of people who are not working.

Like many places across the country, Wisconsin lost more than 100,000 jobs from 2008 to 2010. Unemployment during that time topped out at over 9%.

First National Bank laid off 1,000 people; where do they go? There are no jobs for them. So we are having serious economic problems in this country. We are in a real economic crisis.

In my view, if you have one in 10 unemployed - something is wrong with the economy whether you call it recession or not.

As legal slavery passed, we entered into a permanent period of unemployment and underemployment from which we have yet to emerge.

The people who do not get jobs are often the most vulnerable in our society, and joblessness is a terrible plight for anyone who suffers from it.

In prosperous times, the marginal workers get by. But in tough times, they get the shaft.

What keeps me up at night is poverty and unemployment.

Why are people unemployed? Because there is no work. Why is there no work? Because people are not buying products and services. Why are people not buying products and services? Because they have no money. Why do people have no money? Because they are unemployed.

Two new workers are being added to the population for every one job that is created.

Unemployment determination in a modern economy was the main subject area of my research from the mid-1960s to the end of the 1970s and again from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s.

There is a huge crisis of employment in America, in the Western world in general.

People were so keen to get investment. In those days, there was quite significant unemployment in Northern Ireland, and that had been the general pattern in Northern Ireland for many, many years.