[dmn322]

Right, they use their super scientific model that was definitely arrived at in a very scientific way that just so happens to keep the number hovering at 4 or 5%. There's nothing real stopping us from cruising around with unemployment at 2 or 3%. Other countries do it. It's been like that in the past in the US. And the invention of the concept just so happens to coincide with a complete de-correlation between productivity gains and wage gains. It's also based off of a dogmatic assumption that you can't have low unemployment and low inflation, and a failed economic model.

Anyway, as for a source, the 2nd paragraph of the wikipedia article on NAIRU states it's generally 5-6%. You can pretty readily google it and see that it's been between 4-6%.

https://www.ft.com/content/facf6989-7cd2-3724-a6d4-dfe7c7551... "Among a certain set, the big debates in the 1960s were about whether the government should target an unemployment rate of 3 per cent or 5 per cent." Guess which one they picked. Economics, as it intersects with politics, is not a science at all. Not even close. It's the result of people with agendas funding grants with hopes that someone will show the results they want, and then them cherrypicking those results. If you throw enough money into it, you can find a "scientific" justification for anything. The more academic side of it has some merit... but for the most part it gest brushed aside because it's not telling the people making the policy what they want to hear.