About eight million more were stuck in underemployment (“involuntary” part-timers) last month, unable to find the hours of work they sought.

These measures persist amid an economic expansion continuing since mid-2009, a roaring stock market and a housing market that’s now reliably in recovery.

While the high jobless numbers are partly a legacy of the Great Recession, the fact is that our economy has generated too few jobs for most of the last 30 years and is likely to continue to do so. The only viable response is a return to an idea that once animated domestic policy making: full employment, the notion that everyone who wants to work should be able to find a job, and if the market isn’t up to the task, then the government must fill the gap.