Decent employment for all
The job guarantee is a policy innovation that helps create full and meaningful employment for all via direct job creation. It is a voluntary program open to every working-age person who is ready, willing, and able to work. It provides living-wage employment opportunities in public service projects that address social and environmental needs. The program is funded nationally, administered locally, and available in every community.
As an open-ended program it tackles the problem of employment insecurity. As a structural program it helps stabilize the economy, alleviate poverty, mitigate the impact of economic uncertainty on families, and improve working conditions throughout the economy.
Core principles
Conventional policies have not adequately tackled the problem of employment instability. Worse, unemployment is often a policy goal in the fight against inflation despite the availability of more appropriate tools. Around the world, persistent unemployment and precarious employment remain beyond the control of working people. The social and economic costs are large and already borne by governments, families, and communities. States have the means and obligation to create decent work for all. These core principles motivate the job guarantee proposal.
Key features
The job guarantee is a departure from conventional stopgap measures that are implemented in times of crises. It is an open-ended direct employment program with the following structural features.
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Permanent program with a demand-driven access
The job guarantee is a new program that provides employment on an ongoing basis to anyone looking for living-wage work. Its demand driven design ensures that the program acts as an economic stabilizer.
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Direct net new job creation
The program closes the jobs gap in the economy by creating new employment opportunities directly. It does not displace or subsidize existing public or private sector jobs.
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Centrally funded and locally administered
The program is funded by the central fiscal authority. It is administered by member states, in conjunction with municipalities, localities, and community groups.
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Public money for the public good
These are public service jobs that address social and environmental needs. The program is not a subsidy for private sector hiring.
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Voluntary and non-punitive
The job guarantee is “fair work” not “workfare.” Participation in the program is strictly voluntary. No person shall lose existing social benefits if they do not participate in the program.
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Productivity-enhancing and empowering
The program provides training, education, credentialing, as well as job placement and other assistance with transitioning to different employment opportunities.
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An equity-driven care economy
The job guarantee offers fair and open access to employment to all, as well as support services that help remove barriers to access. It creates employment opportunities and working conditions that fit the needs of the workers.
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Decent wages for decent work
The job guarantee establishes a floor to wages and benefits that would support a dignified standard of living. It provides safe and healthy working conditions and full worker rights.
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Preventative and stabilizing
The program acts as an economic shock absorber. It creates as few or as many employment opportunities as needed during cyclical or structural shifts in the economy. Thus, it maintains full employment and family incomes, invests in human capital and workforce development, and prevents jobless recoveries and the social and economic costs of mass unemployment and poverty.
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Bottom-up design
The job guarantee fosters broad engagement and participation from local communities, allowing members to propose, create, and manage projects. It creates tangible community benefits, improves conditions in disinvested urban and rural communities, strengthens environmental health and sustainability, and invests in cultural and artistic assets.
Public service employment: A path to full employment
L. Randall Wray, Flavia Dantas, Scott Fullwiler, Pavlina R. Tcherneva, and Stephanie A. Kelton
Despite headline-grabbing reports of a healthy US labor market, millions of Americans remain unemployed and underemployed. It is a problem that plagues our economy in good times and in bad—there are never enough jobs available for all who want to work. The problem is most acute for women, youths, blacks, and Latinos, although research also finds a persistent lack of employment for large numbers of working-age men. This report asks a set of big questions: What if we sought to eliminate involuntary unemployment across all demographic groups and geographic regions, by directly creating jobs in the communities where they are needed through a federally funded Public Service Employment program? How could such a radical transformation of the labor market be implemented? What would it cost, and what would it mean for the US economy?