The Guardian view on a job guarantee: a policy whose time has come | Editorial
Victor Hugo once remarked: "You can resist an invading army; you cannot resist an idea whose time has come." Today, in the United States, a job guarantee seems just such an idea. Progressives of all shades - from Cory Booker to Bernie Sanders - have embraced policies that to varying degrees say the state should seek to do away with involuntary unemployment. This is a welcome return to a politics of work, which has been missing for too long from advanced economies. It is also heartening that polls suggest the job guarantee is popular, with half of voters backing it. This seems starkly at odds with America's apparently low unemployment figures. The reality is that the unemployment rate only counts those who are actively seeking employment, missing out the millions not seeking work altogether. When those people are included too, it turns out that about one in seven working-age men in the US are actually jobless. The cumulative effect on communities is a layering of despair. A job guarantee offers hope in what for many are desolate times.
Related: Number of zero-hours contracts in UK rose by 100,000 in 2017 - ONS
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