Unemployment

Government spending cannot create additional jobs. If the government provides the funds required by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other.

Planned Chaos, pp. 20–21

It is obviously futile to attempt to eliminate unemployment by embarking upon a program of public works that would otherwise not have been undertaken. The necessary resources for such projects must be withdrawn by taxes or loans from the application they would otherwise have found. Unemployment in one industry can, in this way, be mitigated only to the extent that it is increased in another.

Liberalism, p. 85

Labor is more scarce than material factors of production.

Human Action, p. 136; p. 136

If a job-seeker cannot obtain the position he prefers, he must look for another kind of job. If he cannot find an employer ready to pay him as much as he would like to earn, he must abate his pretensions. If he refuses, he will not get any job. He remains unemployed. What causes unemployment is the fact that—contrary to the above-mentioned doctrine of the worker’s inability to wait—those eager to earn wages can and do wait.

Human Action, p. 595; p. 598

Mass unemployment is not proof of the failure of capitalism, but the proof of the failure of traditional union methods.

Planning for Freedom, p. 13

On a free labor market wage rates tend toward a height at which all employers ready to pay these rates can find all the men they need and all the workers ready to work for this rate can find jobs. There prevails a tendency toward full employment.

Planning for Freedom, p. 84

There prevails on a free labor market a tendency toward full employment.

Planning for Freedom, p. 153

The result of the governments’ and the unions’ meddling with the height of wage rates cannot be anything else than an incessant increase in the number of unemployed.

Planning for Freedom, p. 192

Permanent mass unemployment destroys the moral foundations of the social order. The young people, who, having finished their training for work, are forced to remain idle, are the ferment out of which the most radical political movements are formed. In their ranks the soldiers of the coming revolutions are recruited.

Socialism, p. 440

The need of society for labor is never satisfied.

Socialism, p. 129

Unemployment is a problem of wages, not of work.

Socialism, p. 439

It is not capitalism which is responsible for the evils of permanent mass unemployment, but the policy which paralyses its working.

Socialism, p. 441

There is but one remedy for lasting unemployment of great masses; the abandonment of the policy of raising wage rates by government decree or by the application or the threat of violence.

Omnipotent Government, p. 65