The program involves the discretionary activities that may be undertaken when labor is available and that can be delayed or discontinued when private sector demand for labor rises. The following sections outline the manner in which the job opportunity employment approach can promote flexibility with regard to labor, capital goods, natural resources and environmental protection, methods of production, and geographical location of economic activity. Firms need only bid them away from the public sector by offering them a mark-up over the job opportunity wage, benefits, an opportunity for career advancement, or any other incentive to move into the private sector. As private sector demand for labor rises, the discretionary public sector pool will shrink, and as private sector demand for labor falls, the discretionary public sector pool will increase. The mechanism works something like the pool of unemployed, but workers move between private and public sector employment rather than between employment and unemployment.
Firms remain flexible, adding shifts or workers to production lines.
The responsiveness of labor supply increases in firms, industries, and the system as a whole. Some schemes propose to increase employment by stimulating private sector activity. However, government has greater latitude in its choice of products and production methods in its discretionary public sector activity than it has in its regular public sector activity and than the private sector has. Government can consider general trends in the composition of economic activity to determine which types of capital equipment are in high demand or short supply. It can help avoid bottlenecks by selecting activities that increase production of capital goods in short supply.