‘Squad’ member Ayanna Pressley wants a federal job guarantee—here’s what that could mean for Tampa Bay

Last Thursday, Congressional ‘squad’ member and House Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) unveiled a resolution calling for a federal jobs guarantee, which would guarantee employment to every adult in the United States as a legal right.

“It’s time to establish a legal right to a job for all people in America,” Pressley shared during a Thursday press conference. “For years, we have legislated hate, harm and injustice in this country. It’s long past time to pursue bold, intentional policies that affirm equity and recognize the dignity and humanity of all people.”

The resolution builds upon the advocacy of Civil Rights leaders like Corretta Scott King and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and cites the works of political economists like Dr. Mark Paul, an assistant professor at The New College in Sarasota, who has written extensively on why the United States needs a federal job guarantee.

Essentially, the resolution proposes a public option for employment, whereby all adults in the United States would be guaranteed a job in the public sector with non-poverty wages—beginning at $15 an hour. Crucially, this could provide gainful employment for populations who, on average, experience higher jobless rates, including formerly incarcerated people, people with disabilities, and people of color.

Pressley’s proposal comes as the United States faces ongoing economic precarity and elevated unemployment rates, spurred by the COVID-19 crisis. Earlier this month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 6.3% unemployment rate, down 0.4% from the previous month but still above pre-pandemic levels. 

As of December of 2020, the preliminary unemployment rate in Tampa Bay, including Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Clearwater, was reported at 5.2%—or about 80,000 people. In the Tampa area and Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, jobless rates are about twice as high as they were in December of 2019.

Pressley’s proposal complements full employment legislation filed by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Representatives Bonnie Watson-Coleman (D-NJ) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in 2018 and 2019, which called for the development of federal job guarantee pilot programs in up to 15 local communities experiencing high unemployment. 

Both the resolution and legislation filed in recent years models a job guarantee pilot program proposed in 2018 by local New College professor Dr. Mark Paul, Dr. William “Sandy” Darrity Jr., and Dr. Darrick Hamilton of the New School, who joined Pressley on Thursday to support her vision for a nation where everyone has access to a job that provides a living wage.

Dr. Mark Paul, who is currently on research leave to finish a book project entitled Freedom Is Not Enough: Economic Rights for an Unequal World under contract with the Chicago University Press, agreed to an interview with Creative Loafing Tampa Bay to explain the significance of a federal job guarantee and how the impact of a job guarantee could be seen locally. Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Last Thursday, Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) released a resolution calling for a federal jobs guarantee, citing work by subject matter experts like yourself and Professor Darrick Hamilton. For those who are unfamiliar with this policy, can you briefly explain—in your own words—what a federal job guarantee is and its significance?

So, a federal job guarantee is a relatively straightforward policy, where the federal government would directly employ workers to do socially necessary work at a living wage in order to eliminate unemployment and poverty level wages, once and for all. 

It's an idea with a rich American history which has dated back to the New Deal, when President Roosevelt implemented multiple, what we call, direct employment programs. In other words, programs where the federal government took the unemployed workers off the streets and gave them dignified work at living wages, which you know, not only gave these people purpose but also ensured that they had money to take home to keep a roof over their family's head and food on the table. And, you know, which provided massive benefits to the society as a whole, whether it be through building airports, schools, bridges, roads, creating public art, public education.

At its core, the job guarantee is really this all-American idea that seeks to eliminate unemployment and provide true, guaranteed full employment for the American people as a basic human right.

Considering this history, do you see any difference in the scope of support for a policy like this from, say, Roosevelt's time to support for this policy today? 

Right now, the job guarantee is one of the most popular policies that I've ever seen polled. Gallup ran a poll during the pandemic that asked likely voters whether or not they believed that the government should provide paid work opportunities over the next few years for people who are currently unemployed—93% of Americans support such a policy.

And the crazy thing here is that 87% of Republicans actually support a job guarantee, but it shouldn't be that surprising. I mean, as a matter of fact, this country was founded on this Puritan work ethic that anybody who's willing to work, to be able to find a job, should not live within poverty. Yet we're wracked with this economic crisis that leads to wide-scale unemployment and mass suffering that is purely avoidable if the government were to step in and employ these people. 

And what we find in the data shows that Democrats, Republicans, Independents, you name it, all support this policy and get that if somebody is unemployed, the government has a fundamental role to play to put them to work doing important things in the community, and make sure that that person doesn't fall into severe poverty.

So I know that you have the national data. Do you have any idea what the impact of a federal job guarantee would look like locally, and can you explain that for readers?

Locally, we know that Florida still has a significantly elevated unemployment rate, where well more than two times as many Floridians are currently counted officially as unemployed than prior to the crisis. 

However, the unemployment rate is a terrible measure to understand what's actually happening on the ground for everyday people right now. What we know is that large swathes of Floridians have simply dropped out of the labor force because it's unsafe to search for a job, or because of the fact that there just are very few jobs to be had in the first place. 

So if we actually look at the number of Floridians that are either unemployed officially or have left the labor market altogether since the crisis began, you know, we're actually looking at an unemployment rate in Florida that's well into the double digits still. 

So, you know, what does the job guarantee mean here in the Tampa region? Two things. One is it means that anybody who wants a job and non-poverty wages can find one. 

Imagine if, you know, all of your neighbors, your friends, your loved ones knew that they never have to worry about taking care of their family because the boss let them go. They'd be able to go find a job with the government, making enough money to make ends meet. 

I mean, it's hard to overstate how transformative that would be. But, you know, on the other side, let's also think about how it could transform the actual infrastructure of the Tampa Bay area. So, you know, I always challenge people to walk outside their front door, talk to their neighbors, stroll through their community and think about the important types of jobs that need to be done. And during the COVID crisis, maybe it's grocery delivery, maybe it's spending time talking with the elderly who live alone and are really struggling with mental health problems during this crisis. Maybe it's engaging in climate mitigation and adaptation. 

You know, I mean, Tampa is one of the most climate-prone cities in the country. And there's just so much work to be done to make the city, more resilient to climate change, and also to decarbonize the city, which will not only save residents a tremendous amount of money through lower utility bills, but will also stop the city from contributing to greenhouse gas emissions which fuel climate change. 

So I think that there's no shortage of work to be done. There is unfortunately no shortage of unemployed people, and the job guarantee brings those people and that work that needs to be done together, whereas the private market, you know [it fails] right now in doing that, largely because a lot of the work that needs to be done isn't work that provides major private profits and instead it provides improvements in social wellbeing.

Pressley describes a federal job guarantee as a policy that could “begin to close racial and gender income gaps”. Do you agree with this assessment, and if so, can you explain how a federal job guarantee would benefit women and people of color?

Right now, the United States is facing multiple compounding crises. We have the public health crisis fuelled by the COVID-19 pandemic. We have the ensuing economic crisis. 

But we were dealing with an economic crisis before COVID happened, even though unemployment was at historically low levels and we were dealing with, really an inequality crisis in our economy, where average workers haven’t seen a raise in a generation, where we still have the same number of Americans in poverty today as when we did when President Johnson launched the War on Poverty in the ‘60s. We're supposed to be the richest country in the world. You know, yet we can't take care of over 40 million Americans and ensure that they don’t live in poverty. 

Unfortunately, the people who are living at—and near—poverty are disproportionately communities of color. You know, when we look at this, one of the primary reasons is because the unemployment rate for Black workers, is roughly twice the unemployment rate for white workers. Well, you hear people talk about all the time, okay well, if only they got the right education. If only they had worked harder, etc. 

As an economist who studies this using complex economic models, what we know is just that none of those claims hold up at all. So if you look at, you know, white unemployment versus Black unemployment amongst people that went to selective colleges and hold STEM degrees, you still find that Black unemployment is twice the rate of white unemployment. Why? It's because of structural racism. 

The job guarantee would be able to fundamentally put a floor in the labor market and ensure that people have access to a job at non-poverty wages, which Representative Pressley states in her proposal would be $15 an hour, which I certainly agree with. 

Now, by instituting a $15 minimum wage through a job guarantee you would increase the wages of almost 40% of Americans off the bat. Disproportionately, those would be women and people of color. Women and people of color tend to be concentrated in low-wage work, for one. And then secondly, women and people of color also tend to be concentrated in unemployment in this current crisis. During normal economic times there's not a significant unemployment gap between men and women. Although women tend to earn less even again once you account for skills and experience and education. 

Women, on average earn 81 cents on the dollar compared to men. But if you look at Black women, Black women earn 50 cents on the dollar compared to white men in this country. And the majority of that gap isn't because of Black women not getting the right education or working in the right industries, but really is because of this labor market discrimination. 

So the job guarantee—while it will by no means eliminate inequality or eliminate racial and gender differences—it will drastically reduce them. I can think of no single policy that would better help narrow the racial income gap and the gender income gap that continue to plague this country.

According to The Prison Policy Initiative, formerly incarcerated people are unemployed at a rate of about 27%—higher than than the total U.S. unemployment rate during any historical period, including the Great Depression. Would a federal job guarantee policy open pathways for formerly incarcerated people to achieve gainful employment opportunities?

Yeah, you know, unfortunately we have a labor market that discriminates against all sorts of people…The labor market discriminates against people for the color of their skin. The labor market discriminates against people for their gender. The labor market discriminates against people for previous acts such as criminal activity or bouts of incarceration. 

This is deeply problematic if we're interested in building, you know, a just and equitable society. Most people earn a living through the labor market. Yet the labor market systematically denies fair opportunities to people that have either done nothing wrong, and were simply born with a different shade of skin than somebody else, or have done their time. 

I mean, previously incarcerated individuals have served their time and should have fair and equitable opportunities in the economy. Yet we know from the data that that's precisely not what happens. The job guarantee, you know, would be a transformative policy for groups that are traditionally stigmatized in the labor market, like previously incarcerated people.

And one of the main reasons for recidivism is a lack of economic opportunity. You know, it's really hard…for people to get out of jail, and to already know that they're going to be ostracized from society…to know that they're going to struggle to find a decent job and safe housing is just really an inhumane way to treat fellow Americans. And the job guarantee would be a pivotal policy to end continued discrimination and terrible treatment.

Do you think there’s greater urgency, or a greater appetite, for a federal job guarantee today that could propel such a policy forward on this scale?

Yeah, I do. I mean, you know, polling that we did at Data for Progress just a few years ago saw roughly 70% support for a job guarantee. Today we're up to over 90% during a crisis [per a Gallup poll]. 

So, the American people understand that we've built this economy to serve the interests of the wealthy, rather than the people, and a more people-centered economy is becoming more and more appealing to the American people. I think a job guarantee is the type of policy that really centers people over profits and that there's just massive growing movements to support.

You know, we've had huge popular support for these types of policies in the past. We just have historical amnesia about it. Looking back to the 1963 March on Washington led by Dr. Martin Luther King, we always talk about the March on Washington but we never say the full name of that march: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. 

Full employment through a job guarantee was a central command of the Civil Rights Movement, including during the 1963 march, where, you know, the most popular sign held up at that march was "Civil rights, plus full employment equals freedom". Yet that's, you know, something that we've really scrubbed out of the history books at our own peril. 

And you have champions of the people like Representative Ayanna Presley, bringing back the stories and trying to renew public movements to support full employment, which would just completely transform our economy in ways that would really wash away the unnecessary pain and suffering that we enforce on the American people.

As far as you can tell at this stage, can you explain how Pressley’s proposal differs from previous federal job guarantee legislation?

The previous legislation was to do a pilot program in 15 communities. Whereas, what Representative Pressley introduced is a job guarantee resolution. So, similar to the Green New Deal resolution that Representative Ocasio-Cortez introduced. It's a non-binding resolution, and I fully anticipate Representative Presley's office to follow up with multiple bills to actually, you know, put forth job guarantee legislation that would turn this resolution, this commitment, into a firm reality for the American people. 

You know, right now we're in a point in time where we need to start building and continuing to build social movements to support this and to demand that our policymakers act. And, you know, I do think that we're seeing increasing popular upswell in support of a job guarantee…The central demand of the Sunrise Movement, for instance, was a job guarantee when they occupied Pelosi's office [in 2018]. And you see, you know, groups across the spectrum, calling for a job guarantee, including groups like Dream Defenders right here in Florida.

Where do advocates for job guarantee programs see the most opposition coming from, ideologically, when it comes to advancing this kind of policy? Has there historically been opposition from the private sector? 

You know, it's a really interesting question and the job guarantee brings together a strange group of people. So I, four years ago I debated Tucker Carlson on a job guarantee and he was pretty, pretty into it. [Interviewer chuckles]. I mean, right? Which is, like, kind of shocking but it goes to the same thing where, where a lot of conservatives get that there's this fundamental market failure. 

Look, if, if some poor people choose not to work, they [conservatives] think that they deserve to be poor. Now I fundamentally disagree with that. I don't think anybody deserves to be poor, but conservatives, you know, get that if the market is unwilling to provide people who are willing to work with, with decent jobs, then that's what economists call market failure and the government should come in and address that problem. 

So you do see some pretty interesting bipartisan agreement around direct employment programs like the job guarantee. And President Trump's chief economist [that] headed that Council of Economic Advisers, his name was Kevin Hassett, was a supporter of direct job creation by the federal government during economic downturns. So you do have a fair bit of interest here.

The people who are vehemently opposed to this is business owners. And the reason they're opposed is because there's no single policy that would better empower workers than a job guarantee…During economic downturns, we see wages stagnate, we see the working conditions deteriorate, we see health violations on the job increase. We just in general see, you know, more inhumane treatment of workers. 

Why is that? Because workers can't easily leave a shitty job and go get another one, because we're in the midst of a crisis and there's millions of other people that are just like them without work. 

On the flip side, when everybody has a job, and you're actually running a tight labor market, employers know that they have to treat their workers well. They have to pay them well and they have to actually negotiate with them to figure out how to create a work environment that works well for the worker and the employer. Because if that worker leaves and employers can have a hard time replacing them because there's not a giant, what—not to get too wonky on you—but what Marx used to call a ‘reserve army of unemployed’ sitting around to easily replace people. 

So the easiest way to think about this is, the job guarantee increases the fallback position of workers. If you're facing an abusive workplace, you can leave that workplace and get a job at a living wage. Today, many people are in abusive and exploitative workplaces, but they don't have a fallback option so they stay in those terrible working conditions, not because they want to but because it's their only option to you know make rent and to put food on the table and to keep their kids, you know, housed and fed.

Finally, what are the top misconceptions you hear or read about a federal job guarantee? What bad-faith talking points do you think Tampa Bay readers should be aware of in the federal job guarantee discourse?

Yeah, great question. So you know that the biggest knock against policy, people claim that it's a make-work policy. And, well, why don't we just give folks a universal basic income? Why, you know, why do we need to force them to work? 

I fundamentally disagree with that for a couple of reasons. So, first of all, I think a policy like a job guarantee coupled with some form of income guarantee such as, let's say, a negative-income tax makes the most sense to me. But a job guarantee is by no stretch of the imagination a make-work program.

If you just go look at what…workers were able to accomplish under previous direct employment programs, whether it be the Works Progress Administration. during the New Deal or the Civilian Conservation Corps, it's truly tremendous. 

But you know, as I mentioned earlier, you know, talk to your friends and loved ones and brainstorm one evening over what types of jobs can be done in your community that would improve not only your well-being, but also the, you know, the well being of your neighbors. There's no shortage of work to be done. 

What there's a shortage of is work to be done that creates massive profits for private employers. And that's precisely the time where the government should step in with a job guarantee program, and put people to work doing socially-useful tasks, whether that's care work, whether that's, you know, climate mitigation work, whether that's, you know, building our physical infrastructure. 

You know, there's no shortage of really important things to be done that would improve our lives in deeply meaningful ways.

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This article appears in Mar 4-10, 2021.