Why should the federal government adopt a jobs guarantee? Just ask the 13 million Americans looking for living wage work.

That’s what Pavlina Tcherneva, economics professor at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, says in outlining the economic case for a jobs guarantee. Every day the U.S. forgoes half a billion dollars of output because of unemployment. But it doesn’t have to be this way. A jobs guarantee would not only employee millions and increase output, but would also strengthen communities and the safety net, giving people the opportunity to organize their human power for the collective good. And, it would do away with “the scarlet letter of the unemployed”—the career gap in one’s resume.