ELR is a form of job guarantee that provides training

Kaboub 07 (Kaboub, Fadhel. PhD from UMKC in Econ & Social Science C consortium. Research affiliation with the Levy Economics Institute. “Employment guarantee programs: a survey of theories and policy experiences. Working Paper No. 498, Levy Econ Institute of Bard College. Econstor. Pages 11-12, https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/31495/1/571694519.pdf.)

In the C-FEPS/CofFEE version of ELR, the government guarantees a real job opportunity for anyone ready, willing, and able to work at a fixed socially-established basic wage (plus benefits), thus exogenously setting the price of labor. With ELR, the government will provide a price anchor and establish greater price stability. During a recession, the size of the ELR pool increases to absorb workers displaced from the private sector, and when the economy booms it automatically shrinks when ELR workers find employment in the private sector, hence it operates as a buffer stock employment program. The ELR wage is fixed, while the quantity of labor in the buffer stock fluctuates. Private sector employers can obtain labor at a mark-up over the ELR fixed wage; hence the price-stabilization feature of the program. Furthermore, ELR reduces the depreciation of skills caused by unemployment, it contains a training component to prepare participants for private sector employment. ELR also gives more opportunities and freedom of choice for both workers and employers. Participation in the program is voluntary, so it is not a “make work” program. In addition, ELR does not displace private sector jobs since it offers jobs which are undersupplied or not supplied at all by the private sector, including companions to the elderly, public school classroom assistants, safety monitors, low-income housing restoration engineers, environmental safety monitors, daycare assistants for ELR workers, community and cultural historians, and ELR artists or musicians (Wray 1998).