Only a jobs guarantee ensures benefits and increases employment

Instead, America needs a bold alternative policy that is inclusive and progressive, rather than one that further moves us towards deeper inequalities. One such bold policy is a federal job guarantee. The idea is straightforward: the government would ensure that everyone have access to a job with non-poverty wages and benefits, including health insurance. Similar to the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression, a job guarantee would provide socially useful goods and services, and much needed investment in both our physical and human infrastructure. While the history of New Deal employment programs brings forth images of bridges, roads, dams, and national parks, a modern-day job corps can do even more and aid us in creating a cutting edge 21st century economy. Undoubtedly physical infrastructure investment is important, especially given the United States’ infrastructure D+ grade from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Beyond traditional infrastructure, the program can be mobilized to speed the transition to a green economy; provide for our human infrastructure by, for example, dignifying child care and elder care work with a formal wage, rejuvenate and reinvent the postal service with postal basic banking services, and invest in the human spirit via arts and cultural services. The benefits of such a program are wide ranging, reaching far beyond those directly employed by it. Everyone will benefit from improved infrastructure and better child care. Our crumbling infrastructure alone costs businesses and the country billions a year, not to mention the average American family loses about $3,400 in disposable income per year from infrastructure-related problems. By eliminating low-wage jobs, we can reduce dramatically the $152.8 billion per year the public spends in supporting low-wage employment. And the savings gained from mobilizing the workforce to push us toward a resource conserving, green economy could extend across generations. The job guarantee, moreover, could solve another problem beyond unemployment: working poverty. Having a job is not enough to exit poverty. Many are condemned to poverty despite working full time. A 2016 study by Lonnie Goldman indicates that millions of Americans involuntarily work part time as their employers cut corners—and benefits—to boost their profits. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), minimum wage laws, living wage ordinances, Medicare and Medicaid, Supplemental and Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP), and others have profoundly increased the economic well-being of millions of hardworking Americans. But these programs have proven far from sufficient to ensure that all hard-working Americans do not go home in poverty. For example, while the EITC has been shown to reduce poverty, economist Jesse Rothstein’s work found that part of the subsidy is captured by employers as the program puts downward pressure on wages. By subsidizing low-wage employment rather than eliminating poverty-level wages, the EITC marginally improves living standards, bypassing the millions who remain unemployed. The current $7.25 federal minimum wage also falls far short of lifting millions of Americans out of poverty, or, worse, does not address the millions of workers who are unemployed or discouraged from looking for work altogether. At that level, no minimum wage employee can meet their basic needs, including affordable housing. Even if policymakers and activists achieved their goal in the “Fight for $15” movement, the mandated wage floor will not protect those without a job or those whose employers hire them for such limited work hours that they cannot escape poverty. A guaranteed jobs program, however, would solve this conundrum. By setting the entry wage at $24,600 a year, the poverty line for a family of four, a job guarantee program could provide a path out of poverty for millions of Americans. The program could offer full-time or part-time work – whatever fits the workers’ needs. In addition, the program would provide adequate health care coverage and other benefits for all full-time workers, comparable to benefits offered to civil servants.