Really?

Richard Layard, one of those responsible for coming up with the idea of
the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment in the 1980s,

Nothing to do with the Phillips Curve or Irving Fischer then? Or Samuelson, or Solow?

This would be simply a trivial piece of mis-attribution except for one point. Layard revived consideration of NAIRU in the 80s and it led directly to the way in which welfare was reformed in the 90s. If, as the Phillips Curve implies, it is the presence of a certain number or portion of people who are unemployed which keeps inflation down, then why with unemployment continually rising did inflation not fall? Layard’s answer was that a large portion of those unemployed were not really in the labour market at all: they weren’t out there jostling for jobs and thus having an impact upon wage rates. They were parked on the dole, on the scrap heap.

The answer is thus to get them back out into the workforce, and if that’s not possible, at least into the labour force. So make the receipt of the dole (or welfare etc) contingent on going to job interviews, going on training schemes,  so that they are indeed having that effect upon wage rates.

He’s, at least in the UK, the intellectual father of welfare to work schemes (or whatever it is we call them. New Start?).

Now, quite how much effect this has all had I’m not competent to calculate, but I have my suspicions that the changes in welfare eligibility in the US have been at least part of the reason why they’ve had, by the standards of the past few decades, very low unemployment rates but not much inflation: certainly, very little inflation by the standards of the NAIRU of the 70s and 80s.

But you would expect the Economics Editor of a national newspaper, especially a serious, liberal one, to know that, wouldn’t you?