U.K. labor market is less healthy than the Bank of England believes

• A paper published by the U.K.’s National Institute for Economic and Social Research, a nonpartisan think tank, argues that Bank of England officials have misjudged how much slack remains in the economy because of assumptions about long-term unemployment and the number of “underemployed,” or those working fewer hours than they would like
• Authors David Bell of the University of Stirling in Scotland and David Blanchflower, a former BOE policy maker who teaches at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, say the U.K. labor market is less healthy than officials believe and that the central bank could be at risk of making “damaging mistakes”

Much more detail at the (ungated) Wall Street Journal article, here: UK May be Further from Full Employment than BOE Thinks

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The researchers are hardly voices in the wilderness, and it would be interesting if they applied the research techniques to other countries.