JG means right to employment.

In the era of Donald Trump, ambitious progressive policies that were dismissed as fringe a few years ago are increasingly finding a foothold. One of these is the idea that every American who needs and wants a job has the right to one, at a livable wage, with decent benefits.

It’s called a federal jobs guarantee, and it has some heavyweight support. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) backs the idea and has said he will release a detailed plan in the fall. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) has introduced legislation that would see a three-year pilot project set up to guarantee jobs in 15 regions of high unemployment. Among the bill’s co-sponsors is Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who tweeted in support of the policy in April.

And when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez swept to victory over Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), a powerful establishment Democrat, in a congressional primary last month, a jobs guarantee featured high on her list of policies.

So the idea is gaining momentum. But what exactly is a jobs guarantee, and how could it work?

The idea

The premise is that everyone should be entitled to a good job, one that pays at least $15 an hour and comes with benefits such as health care, family leave policies and child care.

The program would be administered at a local level, with federal funding, and jobs would be fitted to people, not the other way around. The aim “is not to change the worker in some fundamental way,” said Stephanie Kelton, a professor of public policy and economics at Stony Brook University and formerly a senior advisor to Sanders. “You take the worker the way they are and you fit the job to the worker.”

“It’s pretty simple at its core level,” Kelton said. “You don’t have to prove anything, you don’t have to meet certain requirements. It’s just an open-ended offer of employment for anyone seeking work, and that’s the end of it.”

Her work, as part of a team at the nonpartisan Levy Economics Institute that analyzed and modeled the idea, has informed Sanders’ support for guaranteed jobs.

The aim

To eliminate involuntary unemployment by creating living-wage, socially beneficial jobs for the millions of Americans who want and need work ― essentially making employment a fundamental right.