Advocates of Job Guarantee (JG) or Employer of Last Resort (ELR) schemes have suggested that if the state provides "buffer stock" employment to workers displaced from private employment, then full employment can be maintained over the course of the business cycle. Kalecki was sceptical about the...

Forty-five years ago, the A. Philip Randolph Institute issued “The Freedom Budget,” in which a program for economic transformation was proposed that included a job guarantee for everyone ready and willing to work, a guaranteed income for those unable to work or those who should not be...

This paper examines the development of employment policy in the United Kingdom. Past public-sector direct employment schemes, including those associated with the workfare model, had been discredited as ineffective across the OECD. In numerous countries, however, newer job creation schemes were...

This paper briefly analyses the shifts in economic theory that have moved policy makers from unambiguously pursuing full employment to the current state where full employability is justified as being optimal. We also explore how these theoretical developments translated in practice, culminating...

The Employer of Last Resort (ELR) program is a New Deal type of program to provide a government position for anyone seeking work. Unlike private industries who compete over prices and wages, the ELR “industry†is not meant to compete with the private sector; rather it provides public...