One reason for this is that productive capacities may have been positively affected by labour market reforms. In this regard, non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) estimates have been continuously revised downwards. When looking at slack over the past few years, it is also worth considering alternative measures of unemployment.
The U6 measure, for example, captures unemployment, underemployment (meaning workers who would like to work more hours) and marginal attachment, namely those workers who are not competing very actively in the labour market, for example because they are not available to start a new job at short notice.2 See the box entitled “Assessing labour market slack”, Economic Bulletin, Issue 3, ECB, 2017.