How Bad is Unemployment? How Long Will Unemployment Rates Remain High?

I remember when "full employment" was considered achieved when unemployment did not exceed 4 or 4.5%. Now, it seems that people think of full employment as unemployment of 6 or 6.5%. The Hamilton Project has released a report on how long it will take to get to 6.5% unemployment, assuming various rates of job growth. It says that "if monthly job growth averaged 150,000, the unemployment
rate would not reach 6.5 percent until 2018.  Employment growth … has averaged about 220,000 jobs per
month over the past year. Continuing at this pace, it would take about
two and a half years to get back to 6.5 percent." And, don't forget, unemployment rates generally are understated because they do not include people who have given up and are no longer looking for work.