Universal Basic Employment & Opportunity

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 as a whole. 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 causal relations between income and prosperity. The US Government currently spends nearly $900 billion (Medicaid included) annually addressing these for the most vulnerable members of our community. In spite of the governments spending, nearly 50 million Americans still experience poverty and all of its many symptoms on a daily basis without a pathway towards 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 & Opportunity (UBE) is the creation of a sustainable wage job for all Americans - and the best simultaneous investment in people, place, and business. Work is more than a paycheck, it is a valued social creation. A job is the opportunity to contribute to the common good, a space outside of 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 Black women and mothers in the direct care and childcare industry with a wage subsidy or job guarantee at a $50,000 for 36-months. We know that Black women are overrepresented in the direct care and childcare fields, which include roles like Certified Nursing Assistants (known in Ohio as STNAs), home health aides and childcare workers. These roles simply do not pay enough. Hourly rates for these roles 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 goal of the pilot is to demonstrate that a jobs guarantee is greater investment in people, place, and business 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, OH is only using the Health Insurance Market Place Subsidy. Considering pilot participants will be receiving health insurance through their employer, they will have an income that surpasses the need of any public assistance program.

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

    This pilot will inform if that wage is sufficient. Future pilots outside of Cleveland will inform if the guaranteed salary should be $70,000 in New York City or $45,000 in Tulsa, OK

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