The NYT takes President Roosevelt to task for not being willing to fully embrace Keynesian economics and therefore failing to restore the economy to full employment with his New Deal programs. The complaint is fair, but Roosevelt did better than the article leads readers to believe. The standard measures of the unemployment rate counting people employed under government programs like the Works Progress Administration as being unemployed. If these people are instead counted as being employed (in keeping with current methodology) then the unemployment rate fell below 10 percent in 1937, before Roosevelt became concerned about budget deficits and cut spending and raised taxes. This is still far from full employment, but it is less than half the 23 percent rate that Roosevelt faced when he took office.
--Dean Baker
