Warnings that artificial intelligence could hollow out the labor market have put an old idea back on the table: the job guarantee, a program that would ensure anyone who wants work gets a meaningful, decently paid job. Bill Gates has predicted that AI will advance so fast that within a decade humans will not be needed "for most things."

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei has gone further on timing, warning that AI could cause widespread unemployment within one to five years, cutting many positions in law, tech, finance and other white-collar professions. And even if the job-loss predictions prove wrong, investors who bet heavily on the technology may decide AI is a bubble, and that alone could trigger a recession and job losses.

Why economists reach for a job guarantee

Supporters point to precedent. During the Depression of the 1930s, Franklin D Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which put millions of Americans to work on ambitious public works projects such as roads, bridges and sewers.

France, India and Argentina are among the countries that have launched versions of a job guarantee. The idea also has a place in international law: Article 23 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

Public opinion appears to favor work over cash transfers. A recent global survey found greater support for job guarantees than UBIs, and polling of Americans by the Democratic strategist David Shor shows the same pattern, with greater support for the creation of well-paid jobs.

Advocates argue the appeal goes beyond pay:

• •Investor Nick Hanauer has said jobs represent so much more than income in human societies - connection, dignity, enfranchisement and participation.
• •Algernon Austin, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has said a job guarantee is significantly preferable to UBI because work provides experience, skills and a network.

The cost fight

At a June US Senate affordability hearing, the Louisiana Republican senator John Kennedy called a job guarantee impossible and priced it in the trillions of dollars. When Dr Julie Margetta Morgan, president of the public policy thinktank the Century Foundation, told him she backed a federal job guarantee, he replied by asking whether she believed in the Easter bunny.

Economists who have studied the question dispute that arithmetic. Oxford economics professor Max Kasy, who studied an Austrian job guarantee experiment, said the cost saving comes from the fact that you don't have to pay unemployment benefits, or maybe disability benefits or early retirement benefits, while tax revenue rises. Pavlina Tcherneva, an economics professor at Bard College, argues that once the health costs of precarious and long-term unemployment are counted, the program pays for itself: "It's not only affordable, it's an investment."

Pressley's federal proposal

In September, the US representative Ayanna Pressley, a Democrat from Massachusetts, reintroduced a congressional resolution calling for the creation of a federal job guarantee, a proposal she first put forward in 2021. Her plan calls for a federally funded but locally administered job guarantee that pays participants at least $25 an hour, with regular adjustments for cost of living.

The jobs it would fund span:

• •emergency preparedness, relief and recovery after natural disasters
• •care for children and seniors
• •public art projects modeled on the WPA's Federal Art Project

Pilots and an AI company tax

Two other efforts are moving alongside the resolution. A proposal backed by Democrats Greg Casar, Valerie Foushee and Sara Jacobs would tax large AI companies on whatever was higher: the value of their "tokens" - units of data used in AI models - or their AI product revenue, with the tax rate rising if unemployment rises. Casar said in a written statement that AI CEOs are openly predicting their technology could put millions of Americans out of work, and our government is doing nothing to save jobs.

In Cleveland, Ohio, the non-profit Universal Basic Employment is piloting a different model with a cohort of five workers who drive vans at a transportation company, topping up existing private-sector wages rather than creating public jobs. Founder and CEO Devin Cotten set the pay at just over $27 per hour - the level at which people are no longer eligible for most social safety net benefits in Cleveland.

At a cost of almost half a million dollars for one year, the pilot splits that $27 figure with employers; the drivers currently make about $15 an hour. Cotten argues that workers receiving more money as wages, rather than as a siloed benefit, can build their credit, perhaps qualify for a mortgage, and keep money circulating locally.

He also frames the model as one that could win support from both parties: "Work is a shared value across political lines," Cotten said. "I think crafting a solution based on work allows us to be a bipartisan solution."

Pressley's resolution and the AI tax proposal have been put before Congress, while the Cleveland pilot continues with its five subsidized drivers.