Universal Basic Employment

Demonstrating that a federal jobs guarantee policy can eliminate poverty and be stop payment on its many symptoms.

“UBE is a framework to radically transform our government and business investments in people to create a pathway towards eliminating poverty”

— City of Cleveland Councilwoman Stephanie D. Howse-Jones

The Problem

Poverty is the greatest plague on individuals and society. Low educational attainment, poor health, crime and social disorder, substance abuse, mental health, crippling neighborhoods, hopelessness, and many others are symptoms of poverty due to the casual relations between income and prosperity. The U.S. Government currently spends nearly $900 billion (Medicaid included) annually addressing these needs for the most vulnerable members of our community. Despite that, nearly 50 million Americans still experience poverty and all of its many symptoms daily without a pathway toward prosperity. That reality exists because the government’s spending does not subsidize prosperity nor improve access to basic needs (food, internet, credit, etc.) because they fail to send adequate signals to the private sector.

The Solution

Universal Basic Employment is about creating a sustainable wage job for all Americans – and the best simultaneous investment in people, places, and businesses. Work is more than a paycheck; it is a valued social creation. A job is an opportunity to contribute to the common good, a space outside the home, and the best tool for creating social and financial agency. That agency reduces the feeling of hopelessness, creates the opportunity to choose long-term planning over survival, and reduces economic equity gaps.

The Pilot

UBE is creating the nation’s first jobs guarantee pilot. The pilot will provide 100 participants with a wage subsidy or job guarantee of $50,000 a year for three years. We know that certain populations are overrepresented in the direct care and childcare fields, which include roles like Certified Nursing Assistant (known in Ohio as STNAs), home health aides, and childcare workers. These roles do not pay enough as hourly rates for these jobs in Ohio range from $9.76-$17.08 per hour. Often, workers in these fields are also participating in social safety net programs and are disincentivized to advance in their careers because of benefits cliffs and structural racism found in the workplace. The pilot’s goal is to demonstrate that a jobs guarantee is a more significant investment in people, places, and businesses than the government’s current investment in social safety-net programs.

FAQs

  • UBE (Jobs Guarantees) differs in multiple ways from Universal Basic Income (UBI), a policy initiative made popular by democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang in 2020, and piloted in various communities across the U.S. Unlike UBI, which is focused on supporting families only to reach a minimum threshold of financial resources and stabilize income volatility, UBE ties financial resources AND work together to support people, places, and businesses. Work is more than a paycheck; it is a valued social creation. It is also one of the best methods to create social and financial agency, powers eluding the millions of Americans living in poverty. In addition, businesses cannot thrive without workers, and UBE can help build the case for higher wages, as well as incentivize private sector investments in neighborhoods served with UBE.

    UBE creates an opportunity for the nearly 50 million Americans living in poverty access to the private sector banking tools (credit cards, mortgages, loans, etc.) because their guaranteed income is realized on a pay stub, tax return, etc. This methods creates the opportunity for individuals to freely navigate their life with full autonomy.

  • $50,000 is the starting point for the pilot’s research question. Using the Federal Reserve of Atlanta’s Benefits Cliff Tool, we know that at $50,000, a single-head of household with two children under the age of 5 in Cleveland, Ohio, is only using the Health Insurance Market Place Subsidy. Pilot participants will receive health insurance through their employer, so they will have an income that surpasses the need for any public assistance program.

    If UBE were a single “neighborhood” in Cleveland, it would rank third in median income behind the city’s downtown and a historically middle-class white neighborhood on its southwest side. In a UBE world, individuals’ salaries allow them to co-create and live in vibrant, healthy, and connected spaces.

    The pilot will inform if that wage is significant. Future pilots outside Cleveland will determine if the guaranteed salary should be, for example, $70,000 in New York City or $45,000 in Tulsa, Okla.

  • A jobs guarantee, an idea that first gained momentum in the 1940s with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Second Bill of Rights and now championed in the Green New Deal, is a federal government program that would provide a good job to every person who wants one.