Job guarantee is perceived as “making work.”

A third political economy concern is the productivity of guaranteed employment jobs. A JGP will be sold politically to the public on grounds that JGP workers are productive. However, delivering productivity requires organisational and managerial capacity that the public sector may not have. In that case, there is a risk that such jobs become perceived as “make work”. That would play into the political economy of animus to government, and it could boomerang back in the form of politics opposed to government provision of public goods and services and opposed to macroeconomic stabilisation policy. Careful what you wish for In sum, the debate over JGPs is fraught. Even those who support the aims of a JGP, and are favourably inclined to activist public policy, may still be wary of a JGP for economic and political economy reasons. Implementing a JGP will require political capital and the right political conditions. It might be better to use that favorable moment to introduce new policies (e.g. a UBI) and upgrade a collection of existing different policy modalities that together deliver the same or more benefits without the political economy risks.