William Darity Jr. is the Samuel DuBois Cook professor of public policy, African and African-American Studies and economics, and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University.

Before worrying about the next recession, the sad quality of our current recovery deserves attention. Seven years since the National Bureau of Economic Research officially declared the Great Recession over, vast numbers of American families remain beset by deep economic insecurity — June's surge in job numbers notwithstanding.

One in five American adults, and nearly half of the nation’s children, live in poverty or near-poverty.

Seven years since the the Great Recession officially ended, vast numbers of American families remain beset by deep economic insecurity.

A lot of this has to do with the fact that Americans continue to be subjected to bad jobs or unstable employment — and those who are employed often face stagnant or even declining wages. The fragility of Americans' economic well-being is epitomized by the National Coalition for the Homeless’ estimate that 44 percent of homeless persons actually have jobs, albeit poorly paid jobs.

The expansion of “flex work” arrangements, which make work hours uncertain, contribute significantly to income volatility for workers in low-pay sectors of the economy. Around 50 percent of Americans could not meet a $400 emergency expense by drawing upon their personal savings if they had to.

An alternative to these conditions is the adoption of a federal job guarantee, a policy that would insure the option for anyone to work in a public sector program, similar to what the Works Progress Administration established in the 1930s.

Each job offered under a federal employment assurance would be at a wage rate above the poverty threshold, and would include benefits like health insurance. A public sector job guarantee would establish a quality of work and the level of compensation offered for all jobs. The program would be great for the country: It could meet a wide range of the nation’s physical and human infrastructure needs, ranging from the building and maintenance of roads, bridges and highways, to school upkeep and the provision of quality child care services. It would also function as an automatic stabilizer, a program that could expand with downturns of the economy and contract with upturns.

Given the cyclical nature of our existing economy, we cannot prevent the next recession. But we can reduce its impact and magnitude. The federal job guarantee would reduce the impact by enabling all households to maintain a minimum standard of decent living.



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