In 2024, the Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP) and Jacobin published a report summarizing the state of public opinion on a federal jobs guarantee. Looking across nine publicly available polls conducted since 2018, we found an average of 59% support for the policy. That’s not a slim majority driven by one partisan base but a consistent, solid majority that spans the political spectrum.
Our report showed that Democrats backed a jobs guarantee at rates between 81% and 88%. Independents supported it at 56% to 74%. And even among Republicans, 46% expressed support, with stronger backing among those under forty-five. Perhaps most striking is the fact that voters who switched from Barack Obama to Donald Trump in 2016 showed 29% net approval for the policy, meaning support substantially outweighed opposition even among a group that had recently rejected the Democratic Party.
But we also found that the framing matters. Depending on the specific wording, support ranged from a high of 74 percent to a low of 46 percent. Proposals that highlighted additions like guaranteed health care or a high minimum wage performed worse than those emphasizing the personal economic and broader societal benefits of the program. But across virtually every poll, the basic proposition — that the government should guarantee a job to anyone who wants one — commanded majority support.
Critics of ambitious progressive economic policies often argue, sometimes correctly, that support would collapse if respondents were told the truth about how the program would be financed. In other words, big, bold programs always poll well until taxes come up. Yet new survey data suggests this may not be the case for a federal jobs guarantee.
In March 2026, Verasight conducted a nationally representative survey of one thousand adults, who were asked to evaluate a jobs guarantee question written by the CWCP and Jacobin specifically for the survey. The question explicitly included a financing mechanism:…
Auteur: Jared Abbott
