- Three Senators have endorsed it in just the last two weeks.
- The Washington Post and Bloomberg are writing about it.
- The Nation has endorsed it.
- Blogs and Twitter are full of discussions about it.
- It has been attacked by the National Review and Forbes.
So what is the Job Guarantee? Economist Pavlina Tcherneva defines it as:
a permanent, federally funded, and locally administered program that supplies voluntary employment opportunities on demand for all who are ready and willing to work at a living wage. While it is first and foremost a jobs program, it has the potential to be transformative by advancing the public purpose and improving working conditions, people’s everyday lives, and the economy as a whole.
(Emphasis added.)
Just this week, she and four other economists released a plan through the Levy Institute at Bard College: Public Service Employment: A Path to Full Employment. The Plan proposes:
a job at a living wage to all who are ready and willing to work.This is a “job guarantee” program that provides employment to all who need work by drawing from the pool of the otherwise unemployed during recessions and shrinking as private sector employment recovers. Federally funded but with a decentralized administration, the PSE program would pay $15 per hour for both full- and part-time positions and offer benefits that include health insurance and childcare. In addition to guaranteeing access to work on projects that serve a public purpose, the PSE program establishes effective minimum standards for wages and benefits.
(Emphasis added.)
We read daily about Dickensian officials, state and federal, zealously trying to impose work requirements on SNAP and Medicaid recipients. These are punitive because they don’t provide any jobs (at a living wage) to help the recipients meet the requirements. The JG provides a humane response to these cruel policies.
A job guarantee is not a new idea. It was a critical part of the New Deal through programs like the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Martin Luther King first called for a job guarantee in 1965 and later in 1968:
“We need an economic bill of rights. This would guarantee a job to all people who want to work and are able to work… It would mean creating certain public-service jobs.”
But why today when the “headline” unemployment rate is 4.1%?
Because that number is not a true measure of the millions of people who need and want a full time, living wage job. The real numbers are listed in The Job Guarantee: Design, Jobs, and Implementation, by Dr. Tcherneva:
6.6 million people officially unemployed;
4.9 million people working part-time but wanting full-time work;
5.9 million people who wanted to work but were not counted in the official statistics.
Tcherneva has an 50 Question AQ on the Job Guarantee I urge you to read it.
The beauty of the Job Guarantee is the cost varies according to the need, and is largely offset. (See FAQ 5). In good economic times there is less need for the JG jobs and lower costs; in downturns, the costs of the job guarantee will go up, but will be reduced in large part by (a) additional tax revenue from the JG workers; and (b) savings in safety net programs like Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment insurance. There will be a small increase in the deficit, which decreases over time. (And should be a secondary concern, but that’s a subject for another diary.)
The right will fight it bitterly — For one thing, the $15 minimum wage will push private sector wages up; health benefits offered by the JG will compel many non-ACA covered employers to offer health care.
Finally, this cannot be caught up in any post-2016 battles based on personalities or associations with one or another “wing” of the Democratic Party. (The three Senators are Gillibrand, Booker and Sanders.) It is something all Democrats can and should rally around.