HomeGlossaryHumphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act
Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act
1978 U.S. law (amending earlier mandates) that formalized reporting on full employment and, after amendments, helped define the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate alongside price stability.
Born from civil-rights and labor demands for jobs guarantees, the statute expressed Congressional priorities the Fed must heed in conducting policy. Practical inflation-fighting in the 1980s sometimes looked at odds with early rhetoric, sharpening debates about central-bank independence.
The law symbolizes tension between democratic job goals and technocratic inflation control—central to “economist’s hour” narratives.
Dual mandate in practice
The Act inscribed ambitious employment goals in statute while leaving day-to-day rate decisions to the FOMC—so critics and defenders still argue over how much Congress may steer a credibly independent Fed when jobs and inflation trade off.