A T THE present time, the problem of full employment is overshadowed in the public mind by the more immediate problems of rising prices and industrial disputes. This is natural in a period in which the level of employment is fairly satisfactory and our most urgent problems are those of an inflationary rather than a deflationary character. We may be confident, however, that public concern over the danger of mass unemployment will remain dormant or inarticulate, only as long as that danger does not seem immediate and pressing. The strength of the underlying public sentiment favoring government action to assure continuing full employment is attested by the fact that the candidates of both major parties in the last presidential election found it expedient to give this objective their full and unqualified support. The nature of the public sentiment on this issue was further evidenced by the passage of the Act of I946 which retained much of the substance, though it lost some of the bold language, of the original Full Employment Bill. Full employment as an economic norm seems destined to achieve in the twentieth century an acknowledged priority comparable to the position held by the division of labor in the eighteenth century, and by the optimum allocation of resources in the nineteenth century. The Great Depression showed that the division of labor and the optimum allocation of productive factors could not suffice for the maximization of wealth, and that positive policies to sustain the over-all level of operation of the economy were equally if not more essential. A growing sensitivity to the physical and mental suffering attendant upon large scale unemployment, and to its alarming political repercussions, is also responsible for the growing sense of public responsibility in this field. A substantial number of professional economists have remained skeptical of assured full employment as a national policy. Some have felt that the methods by which sustained full employment would be sought would be either ineffective or dangerous. Others have viewed the full employment objective itself as either meaningless or undesirable. It is with this second type of question, relating to the meaningfulness or desirability of full employment as a goal, that the present paper is exclusively concerned. No attempt will be made to consider, much less evaluate, the methods which might be required for its attainment.