This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, December 12th, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Among the labor market interventions that Senator Bernie Sanders would implement if elected president

an end to so-called at-will employment.

The effects of such a policy, according to Cato's Ryan Bourne, are almost precisely the opposite of what you might hope.

First of all, I think we should look at the bigger picture here, which is that Friday's jobs report

again highlighted the underlying strength of the US labour market.

Unemployment is very low, nearly a 50 year low.

The total number of jobs added is kind of crushing expectations and when you look

internationally the US labour market appears to be performing on most metrics relatively well.

So looking at that, it then seems surprising that many democratic presidential candidates are proposing

quite radical overhauls of the labor market and I think one that hasn't got enough

attention is the one that you just highlighted which is that kind of buried away

in Bernie Sanders's labor market plans is this idea of

doing away with what's described at the moment as at-will employment and that

quite simply means the default for most people is the presumption that employers are able to fire you at

any time and for any reason of their choosing just as you as a worker are free to walk away

from a job if you choose to.

Now there are some exceptions to that.

There are federal protections against termination for discrimination, for example.

And many states have additional safeguards, whether that be discrimination for

complying with public policy or if they breach their own kind of outline

...