A federal jobs guarantee would completely deteriorate the labor market of the future

#3: It could crowd out tens of millions of private sector jobs. There are currently 54 million people who earn $15 an hour or less. When they find out the federal government is offering $15 an hour plus benefits and permanent job security, many of those workers would quit their current job and join the federal workforce.3 Companies that could afford to would raise wages to keep some of these workers; other companies would simply go out of business. The labor markets would be controlled by the government in ways never seen before in America. And even if just half of low-wage private sector workers quit, the number of federal employees would rise by between 35 and 40 million.4 Costs to the government would then rise to anywhere from $1.6 trillion to $2.24 trillion per year, and the private sector would see massive repercussions.

#4: Inflation would rise. A sudden increase in the cost of labor for businesses will lead to inflation throughout the economy because of higher business costs that will need to be passed on to consumers. In addition, when only those at the bottom of the income distribution get a defacto raise to $15, there are upstream consequences. Workers who were making $15 an hour may demand $20 an hour now. Workers making $20 an hour might want $25 an hour and so on. This may seem like a benefit, but “this is a story of serious wage-price spiral, unless we introduce other measures,” warns progressive economist Dean Baker.5 We have been very fortunate that inflation has been well under control for the last few decades. A federal jobs guarantee could change that pretty quickly.