Marshall Auerback’s Labor Day Advice: Create a Job Guarantee Program

Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Marshall Auerback talked to Bloomberg about fiscal policy that could enhance productive activity and deal with the scourge of long-term unemployment. Looking to the Fed, he says, is not the answer.  Auerback wants to see the government initiate a job guarantee program which could be administered at the local or municipal level. “Instead of having programs which effectively subsidize unemployment,” he says,  “we could have a government which actually stands ready to offer workers jobs and benefits — say a 35-hour week at a fixed level of benefits and income.”  He would like to create “a pool of shovel-ready employment” that the private sector could draw on when private sector output improves. Auerback notes that this plan “could replace a lot of the existing Welfare and unemployment insurance programs that we have in place today.”

Click here to watch the full interview.