Giving Compass' Take:

• Tanvi Misra explores some possible positive and negative effects on unemployment and inequality that a federal jobs guarantee program could have.

• What role should the public, private, and non-profit sectors play in combating unemployment? Could altering the labor market have unintended consequences?

• Learn more about the complexities of unemployment solutions.

Many people around the country still desperately need good jobs. And among the fixes gaining traction at the moment, particularly on the left, is the idea of a federal jobs guarantee: that the government could provide work to every American who needs it, either in the public sector or by subsidizing it in private sector.

But what would be the effect of a national jobs guarantee? A new analysis out of the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project takes a stab at the answer. It finds that if such a plan offers $15 an hour, it could affect up to 44 million already-employed workers, a maximum of 5.9 million unemployed workers, as well as a portion of the tens of millions of working-age people currently outside the labor force. Although such a "sweeping" program would cost a lot of money—hundreds of billions a year—it could improve employment rates by 2 to 4 percent, depending on how it's received, the report finds.

What is abundantly certain from this analysis is that the wage offered by the job guarantee program matters. A lot. A government job at around $10 an hour would affect only about five million workers, dramatically fewer than a program offering $5 more per hour.

"What it comes down to is: The lower the wage you set the more it is affecting people who are currently out of a job as opposed to affecting how the labor market works, and really depends on what you're trying to do. Are you trying to deal with the fact that some people aren't employed or are you trying to actually really truly reshape the low end of the wage market in the United States?" Shambaugh said. "That second one is a much bigger task and a much more uncertain task. The first one is a little bit more narrow and targeted in scope ... and effect."

Read the full article about a federal jobs guarantee by Tanvi Misra at CityLab.