Americans Across the Political Divide Want a Federal Job Guarantee

There has been steadily increasing interest in a federal job guarantee since Bernie Sanders reintroduced the concept to the American public in the wake of the 2016 presidential primaries.

The idea of a job guarantee is to provide a public option for struggling workers to find gainful employment — especially contributing to badly needed public infrastructure projects but also a wide range of other service-based work in education, health, recreation, and the arts. The idea has a long history in the United States going back to the large-scale job creation programs of the New Deal in the 1930s to the lesser-known Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) that, by 1978, had put 725,000 people into public sector employment.