Bibliography

Abstract

During the past two decades a broad-based advocacy movement has coalesced around the proposal that all members of society should be guaranteed an unconditional basic income (BI) sufficient to support a modest but dignified existence. Grounded on a loss of faith in the ability of market societies to provide decent paid employment for everyone who needs it, BI advocates promote the BI idea as a more direct and environmentally friendly way of eradicating poverty and a more equitable and liberating way of ensuring everyone’s right to pursue personally rewarding work. In this paper I argue that BI advocates have been too ready to reject the conventional definition of the right to work, too willing to embrace the assumption that it cannot be secured by reasonable means, and too quick to conclude that a BI guarantee would provide an adequate substitute for it. I do not, however, reject the BI idea. Rather than viewing it as a substitute for securing the right to work, I argue that it should be seen as a foundation for policies designed to secure what I refer to as the right to income support. Cast in this role, I argue that BI proposals not only have merit but would serve as a mutually reinforcing complement to proposals to secure the right to work.

https://rutgerspolicyjournal.org/2017/03/02/right-work-and-basic-incom...

Human Rights Macroeconomics

Abstract

In this paper Bill Mitchell and Martin Watts compare and contrast two policy responses to rising income insecurity in the form of proposals to introduce a universal Basic Income and proposals to introduce a Job Guarantee. The paper demonstrates that income insecurity should be solved at its root by focussing on the causes of unemployment and that the only constraints on achieving full employment are ideological and political.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/252251435_A_comparison_of_the...

Australia Macroeconomics

Abstract

Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) includes a community ‘public works’ component aimed at developing communal infrastructure and assets in areas of chronic food shortage. Annex 2 of this environmental and social management framework sets out typical adverse impacts that need to be avoided, managed and mitigated to ensure optimum results from the types of subproject expected. Annex 4 sets out a range of mitigating measures that have been found to be useful to offset potential adverse impacts. Detailed mitigating measures recommended to offset adverse impacts for specific types of sub-project will be integrated into the technical specifications, work norms and information kits guiding the implementation of the public works under the PSNP. Training materials and technical specifications, work norms, and information kits will be the primary tool to incorporate mitigation measures and to minimize adverse effects. Training may be needed in developing a basic watershed or catchment area plan and design and sequencing of integrated subprojects for soil and water conservation and watershed regeneration, including: Gully treatment prescriptions, water harvesting structures, rooftop catchment systems, appropriate irrigation technologies, terracing and bunding methods, check dams and other control structures, biological measures for soil and water conservation, and plantation methods and management for effective soil conservation. In order to facilitate the environmental management of medical wastes associated with rehabilitation of rural clinics, a Medical Waste Management Guide for Rural Health Centres will be produced by the PSNP, to establish the process for preparation of waste management plans. Similar guidance will be provided for the development of Integrated Pest Management plans, in connection with projects involving small scale irrigation systems. Farmers may need training on managing the increased number of inputs, including fertilizers, pesticides and their alternatives, management of these systems, the development of water user committees and follow-up extension support to assist farmers and DAs in developing irrigated agriculture, and managing the environmental aspects.

http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/306291468751547437/Ethiopia-...

Africa Environmental Sustainability Implementation

Abstract

One of the central themes of the conference is how to achieve full employment and ecological sustainability. This paper assesses three alternative macroeconomic policy approaches in terms of how well they-resolve these two policy objectives. The three approaches assessed are: (1) the NAIRU (non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment) approach to macroeconomic policy setting; (2) the Basic Income approach (guaranteed income for all); and (3) the Job Guarantee approach (employer of last resort). It is argued that: – the NAIRU approach fails on both fronts; – the Basic Income approach has the potential to improve distributional equity, though not as effectively as the Job Guarantee, but does not ensure full employment or ecological sustainability; – the Job Guarantee is the best means of achieving full employment but, in order to bring about ecological sustainability, needs to be supplemented by the imposition of natural resource throughput constraints.

https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1504/IJEWE.2005.007491

Environmental Sustainability Macroeconomics

Abstract

There is no doubt that employment generation has emerged as not only the most important socio-economic issue in the country today, but also the most pressing political concern. The mandate of the recent elections is clear on this: the people of the country have decisively rejected policies that have implied reduced employment opportunities and reduced access to and quality of public goods and services.

https://doi.org/10.2307/3518258

Implementation India Macroeconomics

Abstract

Resumen es: El articulo ofrece una evaluacion a la politica propuesta en algunos circulos poskeynesianos en los ultimos anos sobre un pleno empleo basado en la pers…

https://www.jstor.org/stable/42779049

Macroeconomics

Abstract

Proposals under the headings of employer of last resort (ELR) and job guarantee have been made under which jobs would be available to all at a basic wage. These schemes promise a combination of full employment and price stability. This paper examines whether they would be able to deliver on such a promise. The paper discusses the notion of ‘functional finance’ which forms an important element of ideas on ELR. The nature and role of money as envisaged in the tax driven money approach which is often associated with the ELR proposals is critically examined. It is argued that whilst the ELR budgetary costs may be relatively small, this would also be the case from any public sector employment program. The question is raised as to whether there would be jobs of a type which could fit in with the ELR proposals, and what the nature of these jobs might be. The paper considers the extent to which ELR would involve underemployment and unemployment by another name. The possible inflationary implications of the ELR are next considered. This has two aspects: first to consider whether inflation would result from unemployment falling below any form of supply-side inflation barrier (such as a NAIRU), and second to consider whether the use of a base wage would bring price stability as claimed. In the subsequent section, the idea that ELR employment would form a buffer stock is critically examined.

https://doi.org/10.1080/00213624.2003.11506635

Inflation Macroeconomics

Abstract

In any problem-solving task, it is crucial to construct the initial problem in a meaningful way, because it influences the discourse and the solutions that follow. We argue that labour underutilisation is the central problem facing Australia not only due to the lost GDP but also because it punishes individuals via income insecurity and other associated costs (such as ill-health, family breakdown). We construct this problem as a system failure due to ill-conceived and executed macroeconomic policy imposing on vulnerable individuals who are powerless to improve their outcomes. We define full employment in terms of providing sufficient spatially distributed jobs and hours of work to match the labour force preferences at current money wages. This is in sharp contrast to orthodoxy which depicts unemployment as individual failure, yet at the same time argues that the full employment unemployment rate needs to be high to control inflation. While the neo-liberal approach fails to deal with the systemic nature of the problem, progressives are divided on both the problem and its solution. For example, the Basic Income (BI) model advocates the introduction of a universal basic income payable to all citizens. Most BI proponents construct the income insecurity problem as a lack of income rather than a lack of jobs and so they cannot outline a viable path to full employment. By contrast, we propose a Job Guarantee (JG) as a direct response to unemployment. The JG thus addresses the principle cause of income insecurity by restoring the role of State as .an employer of last resort. The JG has been criticised by other progressive economists who prefer a Keynesian expansion mediated by incomes policy and controlled investment. In this paper we argue that if one constructs unemployment as systemic failure within a fiat currency economy (a flexible exchange rate) and desires to achieve sustainable full employment, as defined above, with price stability and environmental sustainability, then a JG is essential, but this does not preclude a complementary Keynesian expansion. An (indiscriminate) Keynesian expansion in isolation is unlikely to lead to the employment of the most disadvantaged members of society and does not incorporate an explicit counter-inflation mechanism.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ah...

Australia Macroeconomics

Abstract

This paper evaluates the strategies of providing unconditional basic income support and those of guaranteeing employment. It begins with a cursory examination of the key ideas behind job guarantee (JG) and income guarantee (IG) proposals. Since much discussion has centered on whether we can afford either program, and how much each may cost, we address the issue of financing head-on. A clear understanding of modern money and the functional operation of sovereign currencies reveals that there are no financial constraints to implementing either a JG or an IG. Therefore, questions of whether we can “afford” these policies can be addressed more adequately by distinguishing between financial expenditures and real costs, as both high unemployment and deficient household income bring about substantial economic, social and political real costs.

https://edi.bard.edu/research/notes/cfeps-wp-29-job-or-income-guarante...

Macroeconomics

Abstract

This paper suggests that a public service employment (PSE) or job guarantee (JG) program run on the principles of functional finance can be designed to promote environmental sustainability. Unregulated or poorly regulated capitalist economies are both macroeconomically unsatisfactory (here focusing on unemployment, but also including price stability) and environmentally unsustainable. Traditional approaches addressing either unemployment or environmental degradation are insufficient to achieve full employment or environmental sustainability, and often proposals to attain one of these goals appear inconsistent with the other. A PSE program based on functional finance can achieve full employment, and may also present opportunities to promote environmental sustainability. A functional finance approach to ecological tax reform presents an opportunity to promote both macroeconomic and environmental goals. The flexibility of a PSE system also can be utilized to promote sustainability in a number of ways. PSE workers may also perform an array of environmental services, including monitoring, clean up, recycling, education, and more.

https://doi.org/10.1080/01603477.2003.11051364

Environmental Sustainability Macroeconomics

Abstract

The authors assess the impact of Argentina’s main social policy response to the severe economic crisis of 2002. The program aimed to provide direct income support for families with dependents, for whom the head had become unemployed due to the crisis. Counterfactual comparisons are based on a matched subset of applicants not yet receiving the program. Panel data spanning the crisis are also used. The authors find that the program reduced aggregate unemployment, though it attracted as many people into the workforce from inactivity, as it did people who would have been otherwise unemployed. While there was substantial leakage to formally ineligible families, and incomplete coverage of those eligible, the program did partially compensate many losers from the crisis, and reduced extreme poverty.

https://doi.org/10.1093/wber/lhh044

Implementation Macroeconomics Quantitative South America

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of how the adequacy of a person’s employment status influences their health. We draw on and extend the Labor Utilization Framework to distinguish between different forms of underemployment (hours, income, skills, and status) and test their relative effects on a range of physical health and psychological well-being outcomes. Using data drawn from a nationally representative sample (N=1,429) of adults of working age, we assess the concurrent effects of underemployment through a longitudinal design that controls for prior levels of health and well-being. The results indicate that underemployed workers do report lower levels of health and well-being than adequately employed workers. However, the relationship varies by both types of underemployment and indicator of health and well-being. We conclude by discussing future research to explore the relationship between underemployment and health and well-being.

https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1025638705649

Health Macroeconomics Quantitative

Abstract

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote extensively on economic matters, especially unemployment policy. King supported a federal job guarantee for anyone ready and willing to work. He believed it would provide employment and income security, as well as increased public and community services. Dr. King’s writings on employment are reviewed and discussed. His policy proposals are just as relevant today as they were when they were first put forward some forty years ago.

https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02779059

North America Racial Justice

Abstract

Today’s currencies exist within the context of State powers. These powers endow the State with the ability to move desired resources from the private to public sector using economic policies targeting full employment and price stability. This paper explores the basis for understanding modern monetary systems as rooted in the monopoly powers of the State. In the first section, the case of colonial Africa will be used to demonstrate how State powers are used to give value to the currency. The second section further explores historical issues in the development of these powers and their institutional basis. The present-day monetary system and the role played by the government are then examined. In particular, the way in which certain powers of the State turn bank money into State money is explored in this section. This third part is intended to alleviate any doubts with regard to the government’s monopoly powers in the presence of bank credit creation. In the fourth part, a mathematical framework is employed to demonstrate the exogenous pricing power of the State. Finally, a conclusion is offered in which the employer of last resort approach is identified as an appropriate policy framework for full employment and price stability.

https://www.jobguarantee.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Tcherneva_Mono...

Inflation Macroeconomics Modeling

Abstract

This paper analyzes the notion of a jobs guarantee (JG) that is bestowed on each individual as a right of citizenry. Central to a JG economy is the notion that full employment with inflation control is both possible and desirable. Unlike a liberal economy, which has used the deficiency of demand over the last two decades to manage price stability, a JG economy controls inflation by manipulating the ratio of employees that are in the private labor sector vis-a-vis the elastic public labor market. The JG labor sector, unlike the private labor market, is underwritten by the state acting as an employer of last resort. The paper makes a case illustrating that although a JG economy is superior to a liberal economy, political impediments would render the scheme inoperative, owing to organized labor’s resistance to how a JG economy (1) controls inflation and (2) stabilizes balance of payments disequilibrium. The paper concludes with an alternative examination illustrating that full employment with inflation control is possible, though only if certain post-liberal institutions are established. Post-liberal institutions are a prerequisite, in other words, if full employment and price stability are to be achieved.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4538828

Macroeconomics

Abstract

In the year 2000 Policy Address, the Hong Kong SAR Government proposed to implement a number of policy measures and infrastructure projects to help create short-term and long-term job opportunities. The measures included a stepped-up anti-smoking campaign, increased employment for urban cleansing and greening, additional staff for environmental improvement and community building at the district level, increased staff in personal care and outreach services, and additional service providers for women, new arrivals, single-parent families, the elderly and the disabled. Together, it was anticipated that these measures would create about 15,000 new jobs, in addition to new jobs to be created by government infrastructure projects.

https://edi.bard.edu/research/notes/cfeps-pn-0103-a-full-employment-pr...

Asia Macroeconomics Urban

Abstract

Most OECD economies have suffered from persistently high unemployment since the mid-1970s as a result of demand deficiencies promoted by inappropriate fiscal and monetary policy. Governments have failed to understand the opportunities that they have as the issuer of the currency. In this paper, a framework for analysing these opportunities is presented. We compare two buffer-stock means of stabilising the price level: (a) the NAIRU approach, which uses a buffer stock of unemployed; and (b) the Job Guarantee, which is an open ended, fixed wage buffer stock of employed workers. The government offers a fixed wage to anyone willing and able to work, and allows market forces to determine the total quantity of government spending. This option is available to the government as the monopoly issuer of fiat currency.

http://www.collectedworksofwarrenmosler.com/research-reports/PDF_Fisca...

Australia Inflation Macroeconomics

Abstract

In The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, Keynes begins with the warning that although the basic ideas he will put forward are simple, because they are a radical departure from the orthodoxy of neoclassical economics, they will not be easy to accept. “The difficulty lies,” he writes in the “Preface” to The General Theory, “not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds” (1936, p. viii). Those aspects of the neoclassical theory on which Keynes’s critique focused were its neglect of aggregate analysis and inability to comprehend the operative role of monetary variables; its adherence to Say’s Law and thus its analysis of the savings-investment relationship; and its abstraction from the role of the uncertainty of investor expectations. When these problems are considered the free market is transformed from a harmonious self-adjusting full-employment equilibrium system into an under-employment (and therefore socially undesirable) demand-constrained system, latent with crisis and instability.

https://edi.bard.edu/research/notes/cfeps-wp-15-life-sustaining-life-e...

Macroeconomics

Abstract

In 1996, with credit from the International Development Agency, the concessionary lending arm of the World Bank, the Malawi government established the Malawi Social Action Fund (MASAF) to assist the empowerment of local communities. The Fund is part of the government’s poverty alleviation programme which is designed to promote employment creation and provide social and economic infrastructure. It is argued here that whilst this provides a useful experience in project management to local community members, there is a concern that ‘undeserving’ communities will be omitted.

https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/36.4.303

Africa Development

Abstract

This paper gives an overview of the kind of community development projects that the Malawi Social Action Fund (MASAF) has supported since its inception in July 1996. The MASAF has tended to subscribe to a demand-driven approach in its evaluation of projects, thereby introducing an element of competition in commu nity development. This has led to imbalances in socio-economic infrastructure, between those districts whose communities have been unable to initiate their own projects, and those where there is more sophisticated “development-conscious” leadership. Ways in which more equitable and effective grassroots development can be implemented are presented in this paper, where the author believes that non governmental development agencies in particular, have a positive role to play.

https://doi.org/10.4314/jsda.v15i1.23850

Africa Implementation

Abstract

A radical proposal to address decisively the problem of mass involuntary unemployment, by way of a government committing itself to stand ready as ’employer of last resort’, has recently been put forward by L. Randall Wray and others. To the question of how such large-scale policies would be financed, there has been a suggestion that issuing outside money would suffice. This review employs some simple modelling to show the limits to ‘printing money’ as a means of financing such an employment policy. The review also critically scrutinizes the claim that the policy can simultaneously act as an antiinflationary device, as well as some other aspects of the proposals.

https://doi.org/10.1080/095382500406477

Inflation Macroeconomics Modeling Quantitative

Abstract

The racially coded terminology of the behavioralist paradigm centering on the notion of the (Black) “underclass” has achieved hegemony in the last two decades of the twentieth century, constituting the ultimate failure of the United States to face up to the challenge posed by W. E. B. Du Bois (1903) one hundred years ago. As John Hope Franklin (1994) recently observed, since by no measure could America be said to have effectively addressed the problem, it remains the problem of the twenty- first century. Residential segregation has been documented to constitute what Massey and Denton (1993) have dubbed “American Apartheid”; Kozol (1991) has described with equal accuracy the “savage inequalities” of educational opportunities; racial discrimination persists in housing and credit markets (Dymski); the Black unemployment rate remains stuck at twice that of whites; African Americans are crowded into the low-wage, no or little benefits, no or little job security sectors (Boston, 1988; Darity and Myers, 1998); Black men, especially young black men, are crowded in the prison system; welfare roles are reduced without accounting for all those who leave; lack of adequate, affordable day care remains a problem. Drugs, homicide, violence, family disruption and dislocation pervade the neighborhoods where Black children grow up. Income inequality is severe, but an even more desperate picture emerges from Oliver and Shapiro’s recent (1997) documentation of wealth inequality by race. The so-called Clinton expansion has left some behind, indeed, including a segment of the population described by Darity, et al. (1994) as the “unwanted” and termed by the behavioralist paradigm the black “underclass”—inner city blacks detached from the labor force and the world of legal work, with little training and poor education, living in neighborhoods rife with crime, drugs, and violence.

https://edi.bard.edu/research/notes/cfeps-wp-7-the-full-employment-app...

North America Racial Justice

Abstract

This paper critically examines and seeks to stimulate debate on a new approach to government policy, which postulates that taxes drive the money supply and that the state should act as employer of last resort to ensure full employment. Taxes are said to drive the money supply and hence government spending derives from money; budget deficits are, therefore, generally needed to propel private investment and profitability. Since deficits should be the norm, this enables the state to finance a system of employing all who are willing to work at a basic-level-wage in the public sector doing social jobs. The findings of this study are that taxes do or should indeed drive money, but that money is better spent on public investment projects and skills associated with the leading sectors of the economy, rather than simply on consumption goods. Therefore, the employer of last resort policy, which is based largely on consumption spending, may be problematical. Hence, either a new approach to employment is needed or the last resort approach needs to expand its concerns to public investment and skills especially in the knowledge, infrastructure, information, social and communications areas.

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=1b2125f...

Macroeconomics

Abstract

Central banks, national governments, and international organizations have resisted policies that would promote full employment because high employment and high capacity utilization are associated with structural rigidities that result in sluggish growth, inflationary pressures, and other undesirable consequences. What has been almost entirely overlooked is the way in which public sector activity can enhance flexibility with regard to labor, capital goods, natural resources and environmental protection, methods of production, and location of economic activity. The job opportunity approach makes strategic use of public sector activity to create truly full employment, thereby reducing the social and economic costs of unemployment, and to promote projects designed to be consistent with broad macroeconomic goals and social values.

https://www.levyinstitute.org/publications/public-employment-and-econo...

Macroeconomics

Abstract

The Conservative belief that there is some law of nature which prevents men from being employed, that it is “rash” to employ men, and that it is financially ‘sound’ to maintain a tenth of the population in idleness for an indefinite period, is crazily improbable-the sort of thing which no man could believe who had not had his head fiddled with nonsense for years and years…. Our main task, therefore, will be to confirm the reader’s instinct that what seems sensible is sensible, and what seems nonsense is nonsense. We shall try to show him that the conclusion, that if new forms of employment are offered more men mill be employed, is as obvious as it sounds and contains no hidden snags; that to set unemployed men to work on useful tasks does what it appears to do, namely, increases the national wealth, and that the notion, that we shall, for intricate reasons, ruin ourselves financially if we use this means to increase our well-being, is what it looks like-a bogy. -John Maynard Keynes 1972, 90-92

https://doi.org/10.1080/00213624.1999.11506181

Macroeconomics

Abstract

Full employment is often associated with structural rigidities. An economy running at full employment and high levels of capacity utilization will have difficulty adjusting to structural changes such as capitaland labor-displacing technical innovations, changes in supply of labor or natural resources, and changes in the composition of final demand [see, e.g., Lowe 1976; Pasinetti 1981, 1993]. Such rigidity is rooted in the structural and technological features of modern capitalist economies. Modem economies are interindustry systems with complex sectoral interdependencies described in input-output analyses. Capital goods are highly specific and in no way necessarily shiftable between different lines of production. Means of production are neither highly divisible nor substitutable. Economic processes take place in historical time; there are no instantaneous adjustments. There is a significant amount of uncertainty regarding the future, and the past is unchangeable. There are time lags, distortions, bottlenecks, and rigidities that reflect the physical and technical nature of the system. While standard neoclassical models exhibit flexibility because of unrealistic assumptions, such as perfectly mobile, divisible, substitutable, and homogeneous factors of production, perfectly flexible prices, and perfect information, the primary “real-life” features endowing capitalist systems with flexibility are unemployment and excess capacity. Excess capacity permits firms to respond relatively quickly to unexpected increases in demand. But this ability to respond requires not only reserve capacity in terms of plant and equipment, it also requires the ability to hire additional workers or to add hours of work. A “reserve army of labor,” including the

https://doi.org/10.1080/00213624.1998.11506064

Macroeconomics

Abstract

This book provides an up-to-date and well-informed overview of the debate on employment. The contributors ask: is full employment possible? Would it lead to inflation, excess of trade union power, and balance of payment deficits? Is full employment affordable? They face up to these questions and consider what would be involved in a move to much lower levels of unemployment. This is a worthwhile and original contribution to current policy debate.

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/employment-and-economic-perfor...

Macroeconomics

Abstract

There is no available abstract at this time.

https://doi.org/10.1080/01603477.1997.11490146

Inflation Macroeconomics

Abstract

Since, WWII, it has been the stated policy of the U.S. government to simultaneously pursue high employment and stable prices. Paradoxically, neither accepted economic theory nor practical experience appears to indicate that high or full employment is even possible with stable prices. In this paper, we argue that stable prices and truly full employment are indeed possible. In fact, the Humphrey-Hawkins Act sets the goalpost too low; we argue that the government can guarantee a zero unemployment rate, defined as all who are ready, willing, and able to work at the going wage will be able to find a job–only those unwilling (or unable) to work at the going wage would be left without work (which are not normally counted as unemployed). The government does this by acting as the employer of last resort, offering to hire all who show up to work at a fixed wage. In doing so, the government ensures that all who are ready, willing, able to work at that wage will be provided a job. At the same time, by setting this wage, the government will provide a price anchor that will impart price stability to the system, that is, we will show that a true full employment policy is not, in itself, “inflationary” and indeed could reduce inflationary pressures under some conditions. Further, the full employment policy would help to reduce economic fluctuations (the “business cycle”) through a powerful built-in automatic stabilizer feature.

https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.74942

Inflation Macroeconomics

Abstract

(1997). Job Assurance—The Job Guarantee Revisited. Journal of Economic Issues: Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 826-834.

https://doi.org/10.1080/00213624.1997.11505968

Macroeconomics

Abstract

Full employment is normally associated with structuralrigidities that may result in production bottlenecks and inflationary pressures. Flexibility or elasticity of the production system istherefore a desirable feature of an economic system. Many standardmodels, however, exhibit flexibility because of the use of unacceptablyunrealistic assumptions. While unemployment and excess capacity areimportant real- life factors that endow economic systems with flexibility, the flexibility gained in this manner comes at a high social and economiccost. This paper explores these issues and proposes the selective use ofdiscretionary public employment as a means of promoting higher levels ofemployment–and even full employment–without creating structuralrigidities, resulting in negative enivronmental consequences, or causing undesirable geographic dislocation of workers.

https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.95968

Macroeconomics

Abstract

Low unemployment and commitment to full employment were widespread after the Second World War. Today, there is mass unemployment and weak commitment to-full employment, which is still necessary and attainable. This article discusses divergent concepts of full employment, its history and the impact of the global economy. We dispel the notion that Europe’s high unemployment is due to labor market rigidity, that the US model is a good alternative and that technology has made work obsolete. Unemployment, both morally unacceptable and economically irrational, weakens welfare states. The global economy makes attaining full employment more difficult but not impossible. Political and economic strategies, needed at both national and international levels, are suggested, along with possible actions by intellectuals.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831x97181001

Macroeconomics

Abstract

Persistent unemployment arises because free market ideology has overridden collective responsibilities. To restore full employment the government must provide permanent employment for all the unemployed in environmentally sustainable and useful jobs.

https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8462.304043

Australia Macroeconomics

Abstract

There are few economic problems that cause as much suffering as unemployment. It has been linked to increased suicide rates, criminal activity, morbidity, mortality, mental illness, and to a variety of negative social psychological effects (Platt 1984; Taggart 1981; Stern 1983; Brenner 1973, 1977; Kelvin and Jarrett 1985). More generally, because it is a primary cause of poverty (Sawhill 1988), it is implicated in the full range of social problems that flow from material want and economic marginalization.

https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483325484.n18

Human Rights Macroeconomics

Abstract

In recent decades, substantial unemployment once again became commonplace enough in most Western industrial nations to erase the optimism that pervaded the early post‐World War II era. That optimism was fueled by a belief that capitalism had solved the problem of unemployment. Full employment was believed to be a permanent feature of Western economies, just as in the 1930s, mass unemployment was often considered a permanent feature of capitalist economies.

https://doi.org/10.1108/eb013124

Macroeconomics

Abstract

Plant shutdowns, rising imports, the rapid diffusion of new microelectronic technologies, and structural changes in the economy have rekindled concern with the problem of structural unemployment and labor market policy in the United States. The President’s Council of Economic Advisers, for example, states in the Economic Report of the President (1983) that “even after full recovery … a serious tructural unemployment problem will remain unless measures are taken to improve the functioning of labor markets.” This same concern underlies the newJob Training Partnership Act, which in addition to redirecting federal human resource policy toward training also broadens its mission to include not only disadvantaged workers, but also mainstream workers dislocated by economic change. Against this background of rising concern and new policy directions, a critical examination of the more comprehensive manpower policy practiced in most other mature industrial nations could be very useful. Professor Ginsburg, dismayed at the high and rising level of unemployment in the United States and the failure to make a de facto or de jure commitment to full employment, has chosen to contrast U.S. policy with the active labor market policy in Sweden, a country that has remained firmly committed to full employment, inspite of rising unemployment in all industrial nations. Consider the recent unemployment record: from 1970 to 1979, average unemployment rates, comparably defined, were 6.1 percent in the United States and 2.1 percent in Sweden. The rates in 1982 were 9.7 percent in the United States and 3.1 percent in Sweden. The foundation for Swedish labor market policy lies in agreements reached among the Social Democratic government, unions, and employers in the early 1950s. Trade union support for an active labor market policy was motivated by the belief that traditional macroeconomic policy had failed to maintain full employment without sustaining unacceptably high rates of inflation, and by the consequent tendency of the government to intervene directly in the collective bargaining process. The labor movement thus viewed an active labor market policy as a means of reconciling full employment and free collective bargaining. Although the principal architects of an active labor market policy were economists at the blue-collar union confederation (LO), every stage of its expansion was preceded by discussion, compromise, and eventually, agreement between the “social partners” in the labor market: unions and management. Policy is administered by the National Labor Market Board (AMS), whose governing board is made up of union and employer representatives at both the national and local level. This governing board plays an active role in policy formulation, and new policy initiatives are undertaken only with unanimous board support. The underpinning of every policy, then, is a prior commitment of the major labor market parties to cooperate fully in its implementation. This is an important institutional difference between the United States and Sweden and must be kept in mind when examining any Swedish policy. Having given the reader the necessary background, Ginsburg then takes us through the myriad programs that constitute contemporary Swedish labor market policy. Space permits me to mention only a few. Best known is the extensive labor market training system, operated largely through the many AMS training centers, which absorbs in any given month from one to 2 percent of the labor force and provides training in a broad range of trades. An extensive public relief work system run in coordination with municipal governments absorbs a roughly equivalent share of the labor force. At the center of the system is a computerized national employment service, with which employers are obliged by law to list all job vacancies and report all impending large-scale redundancies. Providing a broad range of services including job-search and relocation benefits, it is utilized by 85 percent of jobseekers and plays a major role in the labor market. Wage subsidies are administered to firms and workers adjusting to structural economic change and are also used in conjunction with an aggressive regional development policy. The author also examines programs targeted to special groups in the labor market: women, youth, immigrants, older workers, and the disabled. All of this adds up to a very comprehensive and expensive set of programs, annually absorbing some 3 percent of the Swedish GNP. Sage Publications, Inc.

https://doi.org/10.2307/2523744

Europe North America

Abstract

The Youth Incentive Entitlement Pilot Projects (YIEPP) was the nation’s largest demonstration to test the feasibility and effectiveness of a new approach to solving the employment problems of disadvantaged youths. Youth Entitlement was not “business as usual” for programs operating under the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), but a bold $240 million experiment in which 76,000 youths were employed in a research study to determine whether this new idea would correct what seemed an irreversible deterioration in the employment position of poor youths.

As described in the report, Youth Entitlement tested three major innovations. The test was a major challenge to the CETA prime sponsors charged with operating the program since it combined an early attempt to link schooling and work with the country’s first effort to deliver on a job guarantee, which also involved private sector cooperation.

Youth Entitlement was one of the four major programs initiated under the 1977 Youth Employment and Demonstration Projects Act (YEDPA). YEDPA had mixed goals: to learn about the long-term effectiveness of different approaches to reduce youths’ high unemployment rates and low labor force participation and to provide jobs directly in an immediate attack on the problem. It was the most research-oriented, the most experimental, and the most targeted of the four YEDPA efforts.

https://www.mdrc.org/publication/lessons-job-guarantee

Implementation North America Quantitative Urban Youth

Abstract

The YIEPP was targeted to youths aged 16-19 from low-income or welfare households who had not yet graduated from high school. The program’s primary feature was an offer of a guaranteed Federal minimum wage job parttime during the school year and fulltime during the summer, on the condition that participants remain in or return to school or pursue a General Equivalency Diploma. The evaluation research design made use of matched comparison sites, and it focused on program eligibles as well as participants. Questionnaires administered to the sample focused on schooling, work, and related experience. YIEPP’s success in attracting black youths to the program suggests that the current low employment rates for black youths may result from discrimination in the marketplace. Results also show that youth are willing to continue their education and even return to school if they can have income from a job. YIEPP both reduced the drop-out rate of younger teens already enrolled in school and increased the number returning to either regular high school or a program to earn the General Equivalency Diploma. The appendixes contain supplementary impact tables, regression models for basic program impacts, and tests of sample attrition bias. Tabular data are provided.

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/impacts-youth-ince...

Implementation North America Quantitative Urban Youth

Abstract

Les personnes ont-elles un droit au travail tel qu’il devrait etre reflete dans une legislation garantissant un emploi a tout demandeur?.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327655500_Is_There_a_Human_Ri...

Human Rights Macroeconomics

Abstract

“The Role of Employment Policy”, pp. 175-200. Reprinted from Margaret S. Gordon, Ed. Poverty In America. Proceedings of a national conference held at the Univ. of California, Berkeley, Feb. 26-28, 1965. Published for the Institute of Industrial Relations, Univ. of California, Berkeley. San Francisco, CA: Chandler Publishing Company, 1965.

https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1271&conte...

Macroeconomics

Abstract

In should be first stated that, although most economists are now agreed that full employment may be achieved by government spending, this was by no means the case even in the recent past. Among the opposers of this doctrine there were (and still are) prominent so-called ‘economic experts’ closely connected with banking and industry. This suggests that there is a political background in the opposition to the full employment doctrine, even though the arguments advanced are economic. That is not to say that people who advance them do not believe in their economics, poor though this is. But obstinate ignorance is usually a manifestation of underlying political motives.

https://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf

Inflation Macroeconomics

Abstract

Part I. Introduction: 1. The general theory 2. The postulates of the classical economics 3. The principle of effective demand Part II. Definitions and Ideas: 4. The choice of units 5. Expectation as determining output and employment 6. The definition of income, saving and investment 7. The meaning of saving and investment further considered Part III. The Propensity to Consume: 8. The propensity to consume – i. The objective factors 9. The propensity to consume – ii. The subjective factors 10. The marginal propensity to consume and the multiplier Part IV. The Inducement to Invest: 11. The marginal efficiency of capital 12. The state of long-term expectation 13. The general theory of the rate of interest 14. The classical theory of the rate of interest 15. The psychological and business incentives to liquidity 16. Sundry observations on the nature of capital 17. The essential properties of interest and money 18. The general theory of employment re-stated Part V. Money-wages and Prices: 19. Changes in money-wages 20. The employment function 21. The theory of prices Part VI. Short Notes Suggested by the General Theory: 22. Notes on the trade cycle 23. Notes on mercantilism, the usury laws, stamped money and theories of under-consumption 24. Concluding notes on the social philosophy towards which the general theory might lead.

https://doi.org/10.2307/2278703

Inflation Macroeconomics