a Maximum Wage
Louise Haagh,
The Case for Universal Basic Income
James K. Boyce, The Case for Carbon Dividends
Frances Coppola,
The Case for People’s Quantitative Easing
Joe Guinan & Martin O’Neill,
The Case for Community Wealth Building
Anna Coote & Andrew Percy,
The Case for Universal Basic Services
Gerald Friedman, The Case for Medicare for All
Andrew Cumbers, The Case for
Economic Democracy
Pavlina R. Tcherneva, The Case for a Job Guarantee
The Case for a Job Guarantee
Pavlina R. Tcherneva
polity
Copyright © Pavlina R. Tcherneva 2020
The right of Pavlina R. Tcherneva to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2020 by Polity Press
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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4211-6
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Acknowledgments
When I first began working on the Job Guarantee in the late 1990s, the consensus was that the US had reached full employment and the Goldilocks economy was here to stay. The argument made little sense but it convinced me that researching unemployment would be a solitary experience. Happily, I was wrong.
My journey began with the friendship and support of Mathew Forstater, Warren Mosler, and L. Randall Wray, and connected me to collaborators and friends, including William Mitchell, Stephanie Kelton, Fadhel Kaboub, Scott Fullwiler, among many others. The fellowship of the Job Guarantee grew. I met people from the US and abroad who enriched my work. They hailed from all corners of academia – from history and law, to public policy and the humanities. I worked with policy makers who were designing and implementing similar programs. Environmental and social justice activists, youth organizations, journalists, and engaged citizens embraced the proposal. They have all contributed to where we are today, namely a place where the Job Guarantee is once again part of the national conversation and policy agenda.
While writing this book, I benefited greatly from conversations with Angela Glover Blackwell, Raúl Carrillo, Grégor Chapelle, William “Sandy” Darity, Isabelle Ferreras, Trudy Goldberg, Rohan Gray, Darrick Hamilton, Philip Harvey, Sarah Treuhaft, and many others. My thanks to three anonymous referees and my editor George Owers, whose comments greatly improved this volume, and to my student Kirsten Ostbirk who helped with figures and references. Special thanks to John Henry for his generous feedback, often wrapped in some much needed humor. Needless to say, all opinions herein and any remaining errors are my own. Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my family for their support, and especially to Douglas Johnson, who makes everything possible.
Preface
In the blink of an eye, millions lost their jobs. Like an inferno barreling across the globe, the coronavirus pandemic shutters one economy after another. Labor markets are cratering and the wave of layoffs has already turned into a tsunami. The Federal Reserve forecasts that US unemployment will surpass its 1930s Great Depression levels. And on the heels of this pandemic will come another – the suffering and devastation that result from mass unemployment.
This book was written before the hemorrhage in the labor market began. Yet it enumerates the many ways in which unemployment behaves like a silent epidemic – even while the economy is humming near full employment – from the way it spreads, to its virulent nature, to the enormous social costs it inflicts on people, communities, and the economy. In just a few short months, these costs would be immeasurable.
The pandemic has exposed as farcical many of the conversations from yesterday. Raising the minimum wage to $15/hour, we were told, would cost jobs (as if workers in poverty were ever good for the economy). Today, it’s obvious that the people on whose labor we vitally depend are the very same people who cannot secure living wages and basic job protections. Store clerks, dispatchers, warehouse workers, delivery drivers, and sanitation staff are now lauded as “essential workers,” but when the economy recovers, will the experts once again call them low-productivity employees whose jobs are in need of automation?
Yesterday, most presidential hopefuls shunned the idea that the government could provide universal healthcare. Today, we see not only that it can, but that it absolutely must, as millions lose their health insurance along with their jobs.
Yesterday, economists begrudgingly admitted that, despite historically low unemployment rates, the economy was nowhere near full employment and millions of people still wanted good jobs. Today, we face the daunting task of returning to those low rates after reaching double-digit unemployment. It took more than ten years to do so after the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. How long will it take now?
This book critiques the conventional stabilization approaches that produce prolonged and painful jobless recoveries. And if we have to face another one, would economists insist tomorrow that we have reached a permanently high “natural rate of unemployment?” Will they rekindle the old “structural unemployment” excuses for the abject failure of public policy to do what it can
