From Professor Randall Wray-

There are some recent real world examples of programs that are similar to the employer of last resort, as proposed by Warren Mosler in ‘Full Employment and Price Stability, published in the Post Keynesian Journal of Economics in 1996, or what is also called the job guarantee.

When Argentina faced a severe financial, economic, and social crisis early this decade, it quickly created the “Jefes y Jefas” program in which the federal government provided funding for labor and a portion of materials costs for highly decentralized projects, most of which created community service jobs. The program was targeted to heads of households of poor families with children, allowing each to choose one parent to participate in paid work. The program was up-and-running in a matter of four months, creating jobs for 14% of the labor force-a remarkable achievement. It helped to stabilize the economy and to pull it out of crisis. More recently, India has enacted the National Rural Employment Guarantee, which ensures 100 days of paid work to rural adults. While the program is limited, it does make an advance over the Jefes program: access to a job becomes a recognized human right, with the government held responsible for ensuring that right. While this program is relatively young, it has already proven that useful jobs can be created, providing a livelihood for program participants.

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[1] For a detailed exposition, see Gender and the job guarantee: The impact of Argentina’s Jefes program on female heads of households, Pavlina Tcherneva and L. Randall Wray, CFEPS Working Paper No. 50, 2005 .