The Centre of Full Employment and Equity has developed a sustainable path to full employment, which it calls the Job Guarantee program. A major focus of our work is on articulating this program - explaining how it works, the urgency of it, and the reasons why it is the only way to achieve full employment with price stability, a combination that has evaded most economies in the last 25 years.

Under the Job Guarantee policy, the government continuously absorbs workers displaced from private sector employment. The Job Guarantee employees would be paid the minimum wage, which defines a wage floor for the economy. Government employment and spending automatically increases (decreases) as jobs are lost (gained) in the private sector. The approach generates full employment and price stability. The Job Guarantee wage provides a floor that prevents serious deflation from occurring and defines the private sector wage structure.

CofFEE's latest work in this area has been developed into a proposal for a Community Development Job Guarantee (CD-JG) focussing on the long-term unemployed (people who have been unemployed longer than 12 months) and youth unemployed. These two groups have been targeted because of the severe economic and social costs that result as the period of unemployment lengthens, or when unemployment occurs at the beginning of a person's working life.

Under the proposal, the Federal Government would maintain a "buffer stock" of jobs that would be available to the targeted groups. The CD-JG would be funded by the Commonwealth but organised on the basis of local partnerships between a range of government and non-government organisations. Local governments would act as employers, and CD-JG workers would be paid the Federal minimum award. Any unemployed teenager (15-19 year old) who was not participating in education or training would receive a full-time or part-time job. Equally, all long-term unemployed persons would be entitled to immediate employment under this scheme. CD-JG positions could be taken on a part-time basis in combination with structured training.

The proposal is available in pdf format here, or in html format below.

Table of Contents

• Executive Summary
• Chapter 1 Creating a new paradigm in employment policy
• Chapter 2 Policy failure - why a new approach is needed
• Chapter 3 The cost of holding the line
• Chapter 4 Frequently asked questions about the Community Development Job Guarantee
• Chapter 5 Case Studies
• Chapter 6 Administration of the Community Development Job Guarantee
• Chapter 7 How much does the Government need to invest in the Community Development Job Guarantee?
• Chapter 8 Further Research
• Conclusion
• Technical Appendix
• References