If you want the capitalist answer, at zero unemployment, companies have no room for expansion at all. Can’t make more product unless a new technology comes around to do more with the amount of people you already have. At the same time, wages will have an upward pressure as companies try to keep people, which in turn drives inflation. Alternatively, companies try to extract more value from people by working them harder and longer (which is more or less what’s been going on for the last few years). So the answer would be that everyone is harmed to some degree when employment is too low.
Of course, it is not hard to imagine systems where everyone is employed just to pitch in a couple hours a week to get all the necessary work done, and are otherwise free to follow other pursuits.
Uh… people and the economy??? To copy paste my other comment
I’ll happy tell a new grad they don’t have to work full time in a minimum wage job while they work through the process of acquiring their first post-grad role, or the student to enjoy their gap year traveling the country. Happily tell the seasonal worker who did 15 hour days over summer they made enough to have 6 months off. The stay at home parent that they are doing a good thing even though they aren’t getting paid for it, or the person transferring between jobs that they don’t have to start the day after resigning from their other role.
A good thing for who exactly?
If you want the capitalist answer, at zero unemployment, companies have no room for expansion at all. Can’t make more product unless a new technology comes around to do more with the amount of people you already have. At the same time, wages will have an upward pressure as companies try to keep people, which in turn drives inflation. Alternatively, companies try to extract more value from people by working them harder and longer (which is more or less what’s been going on for the last few years). So the answer would be that everyone is harmed to some degree when employment is too low.
Of course, it is not hard to imagine systems where everyone is employed just to pitch in a couple hours a week to get all the necessary work done, and are otherwise free to follow other pursuits.
Uh… people and the economy??? To copy paste my other comment
I’ll happy tell a new grad they don’t have to work full time in a minimum wage job while they work through the process of acquiring their first post-grad role, or the student to enjoy their gap year traveling the country. Happily tell the seasonal worker who did 15 hour days over summer they made enough to have 6 months off. The stay at home parent that they are doing a good thing even though they aren’t getting paid for it, or the person transferring between jobs that they don’t have to start the day after resigning from their other role.