Principles for Designing a Federal Job Guarantee

In the spirit of advancing a job guarantee that delivers maximum benefits, particularly for those left behind in our current economy, we call on advocates, policymakers, and the public to champion a federal job guarantee that adheres to the following principles:

1. Jobs for All: Create jobs for everyone who wants to work; no one is unemployable. These would be net new jobs with no displacement of existing public sector workers. Unemployment should not be used as a policy tool.
2. Good Jobs: Ensure that all jobs created provide safe and healthy working conditions, full worker rights, wages that support a dignified standard of living, and full benefits.
3. Productive and Meaningful Work: Ensure projects produce tangible public benefits and meet neglected physical and human infrastructure needs, including caring for our young and old and addressing climate change. There is an abundant and unfilled need for social useful work.
4. Workforce Skills: Build lasting skills through on-the-job training, paid apprenticeships, credentialing, and other career-building opportunities.
5. Stronger Communities: Prioritize projects that improve conditions in disinvested urban, rural, and indigenous communities; increase environmental health and sustainability; and strengthen cultural and economic vitality.
6. Bottom-Up: Foster broad engagement and participation from local communities, especially those most left behind, in suggesting and prioritizing projects.
7. Equity Driven: Embed a race, gender, and broad social equity approach throughout the program. Ensure all marginalized groups and communities are able to participate.
8. Protect the Safety Net: Ensure no loss of social safety net programs.
9. Raise the Floor: By providing a universal public employment option, increase worker bargaining power and improve the quality of low-wage jobs throughout the economy.
10. Stable Economy: Protect the economy from future recessions by maintaining consumer spending, while building human capital and improving the environment in ways that create a stronger, more resilient economy.
11. Publicly Financed: Financing the Job Guarantee is not the problem.

The above principles were drawn from previous statements of principles developed by PolicyLink, in collaboration with Darrick Hamilton and Sandy Darity; and the Economic Democracy Initiative.