After the Wreckage: The Job Guarantee as a New Labor Standard

Pavlina R. Tcherneva

Economics Working Paper Archive from Levy Economics Institute

Abstract: The job guarantee (JG) has long been theorized as a cyclical stabilizer, a buffer stock of publicly employed workers that expands in downturns and contracts in booms. That framing was useful but is no longer sufficient. This paper reframes the JG as a permanent structural reform--a new labor standard and an institutional anchor for rebuilding the public sector from the ground up--rather than as a safety valve or transitional employment. The argument proceeds on two fronts. The JG must shift focus from its anti-cyclical features and toward its structural role in re-engineering the precarious labor market. Precarity is the business model. No cyclical stabilizer addresses the systemic levers firms use to suppress labor costs: wage theft, irregular scheduling, chronic misclassification, and the denial of basic benefits. The JG can be designed in such a way as to remove that leverage. At the same time, the JG must be decisively married to the direct provision of public services that markets either overprice or refuse to supply altogether. After decades of austerity and deliberate dismantling of federal capacity, the public sector must itself be rebuilt. It needs to be staffed, funded, and directed toward the concrete, unmet needs of American families: healthcare, childcare, housing, elder care, and energy security. The JG is the institutional mechanism that does both at once--not as a patchwork of separate interventions, but as the foundation of an economy that finally works for the people who do the work.

Keywords: job guarantee; Employer of Last Resort; labor standards; precarious employment; socialization of investment; affordability crisis; public sector capacity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 E61 E62 H55 I38 J08 J21 J38 J48 J58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pke
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