CP solves. Half-time employment through the states is better, still preserves benefits and allows for labor mobility while ensuring a floor. Avoids the link to politics but still relies on federal funding that has already been allocated while creating a model for eventual federal follow-on

In the wake of the Covid recession, state and local governments have the chance to remake local labor markets—and public assistance—by adopting a policy guaranteeing half-time employment at $15 an hour for every resident.

Despite the hype of supposed proliferating job openings, long experience shows that even if we approach rates of nominal “full employment” again, such statistics will inevitably ignore higher unemployment rates for Black, Latino, formerly incarcerated, and many other workers. In a Covid-based recession where women in particular have struggled to return to previous levels of employment, a job guarantee may be critical to restore real employment alternatives for everyone who wants a job.

So why only a half-time job guarantee?

Because any state or local government will inevitably struggle with the costs of launching such a program, guaranteeing half-time jobs will be far more economically feasible. And because of the perversity of welfare benefit phaseouts, a half-time work guarantee will deliver much of the income of full-time employment, particularly for parents with kids. As importantly, a half-time program addresses some of the political and social challenges even progressive critics of job guarantees highlight, since it would give recipients time to care for their children, pursue education, or seek additional part-time work in fields where they eventually want to gain full-time, better-paying permanent employment.

Such local job guarantee programs would build on federal proposals in recent years by Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, proponents of the Green New Deal, and policy centers like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Center for American Progress, and the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College—all pushing federal programs to ensure that anyone wanting a job is guaranteed one by the government.

While no federal job guarantee program looks likely to be approved in the current congressional session, the federal dollars flowing to states and local governments from the American Rescue Plan Act and Biden’s projected “Build Back Better” program create an opportunity for some states and local governments to pilot local versions that could be models for a future federal policy.

Such federal funding will help offset the substantial initial costs of a job guarantee program—which in time, as multiple studies of job investment programs show, will substantially offset those initial costs. By raising the long-term income of participants, a job guarantee will stimulate the overall economy and increases local tax revenues. Higher job participation also tends to reduce other government spending, by improving school outcomes of participants’ children and reducing criminal justice costs.

Beyond supporting participants themselves, a key goal of a job guarantee is to expand overall worker power in the economy to demand higher wages. Reducing the desperation of the unemployed will strengthen individual and collective bargaining in all local industries; the resulting higher wages and consumption in turn will stimulate local economies and tax revenue.