IV 
117TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. RES. 145 
Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Federal job 
guarantee. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
FEBRUARY 22, 2021 
Ms. PRESSLEY submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the 
Committee on Education and Labor 
RESOLUTION 
Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create 
a Federal job guarantee. 
Whereas Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human 
Rights recognizes that ‘‘everyone has the right to work, 
to free choice of employment, to just and favorable condi-
tions of work and to protection against unemployment’’; 
Whereas a job guarantee was a central demand and unfin-
ished legacy of the civil rights movement, such that— 
(1) at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and 
Freedom, Martin Luther King, Jr., joined A. Philip Ran-
dolph and Bayard Rustin in demanding a job guarantee; 
(2) in the subsequent decade, Coretta Scott King led 
a grassroots movement to enact a job guarantee; 
(3) these leaders all built on and advanced the work 
of earlier pioneers like Sadie T.M. Alexander, the Na-
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tion’s first Black economist, who advocated a job guar-
antee to address racial discrimination against Black 
workers, while improving labor market conditions for all 
workers in the 1940s; and 
(4) throughout the past 100 years, activists and in-
tellectuals like Ella Baker and the Mississippi Freedom 
Democratic Party have all seen a Federal job guarantee 
as a key element of racial justice; 
Whereas the right to a ‘‘useful and remunerative’’ job was 
the first and most fundamental right in President Frank-
lin D. Roosevelt’s proposed Economic Bill of Rights and 
is a core plank of the Green New Deal movement and the 
People’s Justice Guarantee; 
Whereas a job guarantee is essential to any effort to close the 
racial and gender income and wealth gap; 
Whereas the United States has, on multiple occasions, includ-
ing from 1945 to 1946, 1977 to 1978, and more recently, 
introduced legislation in an attempt to establish a full 
employment economy; 
Whereas the commitment to full employment has been em-
braced by Congress and is part of the statutory mandate 
of the Federal Reserve System; 
Whereas the United States has experienced decades of in-
creasing inequality, racial economic exclusion and in-
equity, stagnant wages, declining union membership, and 
deteriorating workplace protections and conditions; 
Whereas the United States has experienced decades of chron-
ic underinvestment in its communities, workforce, infra-
structure, public services, agricultural and industrial 
heartland, and natural environment; 
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Whereas the United States has, for decades, perpetuated a 
punitive, racist, ineffective criminal legal system that has 
systematically excluded millions of individuals from the 
workforce, failed to effectively promote reentry for pre-
viously incarcerated individuals, and forced incarcerated 
individuals to work in oppressive and exploitative condi-
tions for effectively no pay; 
Whereas the United States is experiencing a long-term eco-
nomic crisis in which many workers are overworked, un-
derpaid, and experience job and economic insecurity, with 
at least 100 million Americans living in or near poverty, 
and 28 percent of full-time workers earning less than $15 
an hour according to the National Equity Atlas; 
Whereas the United States is facing a weak economy and 
sluggishly facing a grossly unequal recovery in the after-
math of the global financial crisis that has benefited few 
at the expense of many; 
Whereas the United States presently fails to recognize, sup-
port, or adequately remunerate the household and care 
work of millions of women, parents, and familial care-
givers; 
Whereas economic prosperity in the United States has been 
highly unequal since its founding, largely falling on racial 
lines, with Black and indigenous Americans consistently 
earning less, owning less, and experiencing greater rates 
of economic precarity and poverty than White Americans; 
Whereas the United States has not increased the minimum 
wage for years, and maintains subminimum wage 
carveouts for incarcerated people, people with disabilities, 
and tipped workers; 
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Whereas the United States presently exploits millions of un-
documented workers, by forcing them to work in sub-
standard conditions and below prevailing wages; 
Whereas the United States is presently experiencing a 
generational crisis, as millions of younger and older work-
ers face structural barriers to meaningful participation in 
the workforce; 
Whereas the United States is underinvesting in creative, cul-
tural, scientific, and knowledge industries, including high-
er education, libraries, public art, and journalism; 
Whereas the United States is facing four overlapping and 
compounding crises, namely the COVID–19 pandemic, 
climate change, systemic racism, and extreme economic 
inequality, that together require a large-scale mobilization 
on the scale of World War II to address; 
Whereas the United States is experiencing a sustained eco-
nomic depression, in which low-wage workers, and Black, 
Latinx, Native American, and other communities of color, 
as well as women and people with disabilities, have suf-
fered disproportionate employment and income losses and 
face mounting debts; 
Whereas the United States is facing growing demand for care 
work and social services as the baby boomer generation 
retires from the workforce, and the senior population is 
expected to nearly double between 2018 and 2060; 
Whereas the United States is facing new workforce challenges 
relating to privacy, worker autonomy, data gathering and 
surveillance, and automation, as a result of new tech-
nologies and the rapidly changing nature of industry, and 
these challenges have been accelerated by the COVID–19 
pandemic; 
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Whereas the United States currently suffers from high levels 
of 
underemployment, 
persistent 
joblessness 
among 
marginalized populations, and the growth of primarily 
low-quality jobs, resulting in— 
(1) the loss of millions of hours of potential output, 
as well as deterioration of skills and productive capacity; 
(2) lower community living standards, increased lev-
els of working poverty and homelessness, and higher 
rates of individual and family suffering, including phys-
ical and mental health problems; 
(3) higher rates of workplace discrimination, harass-
ment, and a ‘‘last hired, first fired’’ approach that dis-
proportionately affects vulnerable populations, including 
Black workers, women, LGTBQIA workers, workers with 
disabilities, formerly incarcerated workers, and young 
and elderly workers; 
(4) an effective minimum wage of zero for those who 
cannot obtain employment; and 
(5) an increasing fraction of the workforce forced to 
undertake multiple jobs, or engage in dangerous work 
with insufficient labor protections; 
Whereas reliance on private investment alone has never his-
torically succeeded in establishing a true full employment 
economy, in which every individual wishing to undertake 
paid work can do so; 
Whereas reliance on education, skill development, job train-
ing, and other ‘‘indirect’’ policies alone have never his-
torically succeeded in establishing a true full employment 
economy, in which every individual wishing to undertake 
paid work can do so; 
Whereas untargeted, demand-increasing stimulus alone has 
never historically succeeded in establishing a true full em-
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ployment economy, in which every individual wishing to 
undertake paid work can do so; 
Whereas the Federal Government has the unique legal and fi-
nancial capacity, relative to the local and State govern-
ments and the private sector, to credibly commit to fund-
ing the programs and institutions necessary to establish 
a true full employment economy, in which every indi-
vidual wishing to undertake paid work can do so; 
Whereas the Federal Reserve, on its own, has never histori-
cally succeeded in establishing a true full employment 
economy, in which every individual wishing to undertake 
paid work can do so, and by its own admission, lacks the 
necessary tools and capacity to do so; 
Whereas Congress and the Department of the Treasury have 
a demonstrated track record of successfully funding and 
administering direct job creation programs, including the 
Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conserva-
tion Corps during the New Deal, which created over six 
million jobs in less than a year; 
Whereas Congress and the Treasury have a demonstrated 
track record of mass-scale mobilization of the economy, 
including during World War II, when the United States 
maintained an average unemployment rate of under 2 
percent, and successfully doubled real output of the en-
tire economy in under 6 years in the face of an unprece-
dented existential threat; and 
Whereas President Biden has taken Executive action on the 
creation of a Civilian Climate Corps Initiative, in need of 
dedicated, permanent funding on a nondiscretionary 
basis, to mobilize the next generation of conservation and 
resilience workers and maximize the creation of accessible 
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training opportunities and good jobs: Now, therefore, be 
it 
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Rep-
resentatives that— 
(1) it is the duty of the Federal Government to 
create a Federal job guarantee— 
(A) to finally eliminate the moral and eco-
nomic scourge of involuntary unemployment; 
(B) to establish a true full employment so-
ciety, in which anyone who wants to undertake 
paid work in the service of the community and 
the environment has ample opportunities to do 
so; 
(C) to collectively achieve the greatest pos-
sible level of socially and ecologically sustain-
able prosperity, and share the fruits of that 
prosperity equitably among all people; 
(D) to empower the working class by offer-
ing every worker, regardless of his or her back-
ground, capacity, or status, the opportunity to 
earn a fair, living wage, and to organize with 
fellow workers to advocate for common inter-
ests; 
(E) to ensure every person in America has 
genuine and meaningful opportunities for edu-
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cation, training, career advancement, and choice 
with respect to workforce participation; 
(F) to update and expand our under-
standing of socially necessary or useful work to 
include historically underrecognized and uncom-
pensated labor, including domestic and social 
care, ecological preservation, and cultural, sci-
entific, and creative work; 
(G) to promote justice and equity by stop-
ping current, preventing future, and repairing 
historic oppression and discrimination of indige-
nous peoples, communities of color, migrant 
communities, deindustrialized communities, de-
populated rural communities, the poor, low-in-
come 
workers, 
women, 
the 
elderly, 
the 
unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth 
(referred to in this resolution as ‘‘frontline and 
vulnerable communities’’); 
(H) to complete the unfinished legacy of 
the civil rights movement and the New Deal, 
and meet the contemporary challenges posed by 
the climate crisis identified in the Green New 
Deal resolution; and 
(I) to meet the broader social and eco-
nomic challenges of the 21st century through 
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