Americans Across the Political Divide Want a Federal Job Guarantee ByThe Center for Working-Class Politics

A look at all the available survey data on public support for a job guarantee shows consistently strong support for the idea. It's a winning idea for the Left.

Workers prepare to lift a new pedestrian bridge into place at the Stamford Transportation Center on August 26, 2023 in Stamford, Connecticut. (John Moore / Getty Images)

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.

Job guarantees, explained

Dylan Matthews

Imagine if a well-paying job were a human right.

Support for a job guarantee is remarkably consistent across key demographics, including partisanship. A 2023 survey by Data for Progress, for example, found that while Democrats were more likely to support the policy than other voters (88 percent of Democrats responded favorably), independents were also overwhelmingly supportive (74 percent), as were a solid majority of Republicans, particularly those under forty-five.

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Yet the surveys also show that how you present a job guarantee to voters matters. Not surprisingly, given many Americans' concerns about government spending, the two polls that tied a jobs program to potentially costly guarantees of a "good standard of living" (American National Election Studies) or a high guaranteed minimum wage and government-guaranteed health care (Rasmussen) found less backing.....

ps here is the website of CWCP:The Center for Working Class Politics jz

The Center for Working Class Politics

June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Network
http://www.njfac.org

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