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Full-employment policies had their heyday in the aftermath of World War Two and in the following years, in the context of postwar reconstruction and the predominance of Keynesian thought. In the United States, the Employment Act of 1946 committed the Federal Government to “coordinate and utilize all its plans, functions, and resources … to foster and promote free competitive enterprise and the general welfare; conditions under which there will be afforded useful employment for those able, willing, and seeking to work; and to promote maximum employment, production, and purchasing power”. The Act is generally considered as having introduced full employment as a political commitment for the Government. This goal would remain central to the economic strategy of subsequent US administration until the 196os together with active demand management. In those years, the Council of Economic Advisers, an institution established by the Employment Act itself, was very active in setting quantitative targets and in framing the policies to attain them. The Economic Reports of the President that the Council produces from 1947 on are thus a precious source of information on the practical content of those ‘Keynesian’ policies. The goal of this paper is to reconstruct the policy debate of the late 1940s and the 1950s, especially focusing on the proper definition of full employment, its empirical measure and the nexus between full employment and price stability. We will build on the official material related to the activities of the CEA, especially the Economic Reports of the President and the applied policy literature of the years when the Employment Act was conceived and born. Given the deep involvement of academic American economists in the design and evaluation of economic policy, we will also make use of academic material. This reconstruction appears of particular relevance in connection with the renewed attention towards the full employment policy goal and the current debates on the inflation-unemployment relationship, especially fostered by the current performance of the US economy.