. The EPWP is an attempt by government to alleviate South Africa's unemployment crisis.
Programs for adults •
1848 – The first governmentally guaranteed work program was implemented by the
Parisian government in France through the
National Workshops which took place from February to June 1848. •
1928–1991 – Citizens of the
USSR were guaranteed the right to employment, and unemployment vanished in 1930. A job guarantee was included in its 1936 constitution, and was given further prominence in the 1977 revision. Later
communist states followed this lead. •
1935–1943 – In the
United States from 1935 to 1943, the
Works Progress Administration aimed to ensure one paid job for all families whose breadwinners suffered long-term unemployment.
Full employment was achieved by 1942 due to
World War II, which led to the ending of the organisation the following year. •
1945 – From 1945, the
Australian government was committed to full employment through the position established by the White Paper
Full Employment in Australia, however this never included a formal job guarantee. The
Reserve Bank Act 1959 charges the
Reserve Bank of Australia with ensuring full employment, amongst other duties. The Australian government's definition of "full employment" changes with the adoption of the
NAIRU concept in the late 1970s, with the government now aiming to keep a sufficient proportion of people unemployed to stop low-unemployment-related inflation. •
1946 – The original drafters of the US
Employment Act of 1946 intended for it to mandate full employment, however Congress ultimately gave it a broader pro-employment nature. •
1948 – The UN's
Universal Declaration of Human Rights' Article 23 includes "Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment." It is ratified by most non-socialist countries. •
1949–1997 – In the
People's Republic of China from 1949 to 1997, the "
iron rice bowl" practice guaranteed employment for its citizens. •
1978 – The US
Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act of 1978 authorized the government to create a "reservoir of public employment" in case private enterprise does not provide sufficient jobs. These jobs are mainly to be in the lower ranges of skill and pay so as to not draw the workforce away from the private sector. However, the act did not establish such a reservoir (it only
authorized it), and no such program has been implemented, even though the unemployment rate has generally been above the rate (3%) targeted by the act. •
1998–2010 – The
United Kingdom's
New Deal was similar to Australia's
Work for the Dole scheme, though more focused on young people. It was in place from 1998 to 2010. •
2001 – The
Argentine government introduced the
Jefes de Hogar (Heads of Households) program in 2001 to combat the social malaise that followed the
financial crisis in that year. •
2003 – The
South African government conceptualized the
Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) in 2003 to overcome the rising unemployment and reduce poverty. EPWP planned to create 1 million jobs in 5 years. •
2005 – Similarly, the government of
India in 2005 introduced a five-year plan called the
National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) to bridge the vast rural–urban income disparities that have emerged as India's information technology sector has boomed. The program successfully empowered women and raised rural wages, but also attracted the ire of landowners who have to pay farm labourers more due to a higher prevailing wage. NREGA projects tend to be highly labour-intensive and low skill, like dam and road construction, and soil conservation, with modest but positive long-term benefits and mediocre management. •
2020 – The Public Employment Service (AMS) in
Austria in cooperation with University of Oxford economists Maximilian Kasy and Lukas Lehner started a job guarantee pilot in the municipality of
Gramatneusiedl (Marienthal). The project's site became famous a century earlier through a landmark study in empirical social research when
Marie Jahoda,
Paul Lazarsfeld and
Hans Zeisel studied the consequences of mass unemployment on a community in the wake of the Great Depression. The current job guarantee pilot returned to the site to study the opposite: what happens when unemployed people are guaranteed a job? The program offers jobs to every unemployed job seeker who has been without a paid job for more than a year. Most of the long-term jobless were placed in non-profit training companies tasked with repairing second-hand furniture, renovating housing, public gardening, and similar jobs. The pilot eliminated long-term unemployment – an important result, given the programme’s entirely voluntary nature. Participants’ gained greater financial security, improved their psycho-social stability and social inclusion. The study drew international attention and informed policy reports by the EU, OECD, UN, and ILO. The program ended in 2024 and served as the basis for the European Commission's Social Fund + (ESF+) to provide 23 million EUR for further job guarantee pilots across Europe. •
2030 – In 2021, a report released by California governor Gavin Newsom's Future of Work Commission called for a job guarantee program in California by 2030.
Programs for youth • The
European Youth Guarantee is a commitment by
European Union member states to "guarantee that all young people under the age of 25 receive, within four months of becoming unemployed or leaving formal education, a good quality work offer to match their skills and experience; or the chance to continue their studies or undertake an apprenticeship or professional traineeship." The committed countries agreed to start implementing this in 2014. Since 2014, each year more than 3.5 million young people registered in the program accepted an offer of employment, continued education, a traineeship or an apprenticeship. Correspondingly, youth unemployment in the EU has decreased from a peak of 24% in 2013 to 13.9% by 2023. • Sweden first implemented a similar guarantee in 1984, with fellow Nordic countries Norway (1993), Denmark (1996) and Finland (1996) following. Later, some additional European countries also offered this as well, prior to the EU wide adoption. •
Germany and many Nordic countries have long had civil and military conscription programs for young people, which requires or gives them the option to do low-paid work for a government body for up to 12 months. This was also the case in the
Netherlands until 1997. It was also the case in France, and that country is reintroducing a
similar program from 2021. •
Bhutan runs a Guaranteed Employment Program for youth. == Advocacy ==