I think most of the problem with "one-euro jobs" is more that they're (a) "one-euro" than anything else and (b) treated as a temporary thing for people who are

I think most of the problem with "one-euro jobs" is more that they're (a) "one-euro" than anything else and (b) treated as a temporary thing for people who are unable to find anything else. There's a school of economists that proposes a Job Guarantee (called an Employer of Last Resort in their earlier writing, in analogy with the Lender of Last Resort). An absolutely crucial aspect of their proposal is that the jobs would be administratively treated like any other job at the minimum wage. That is, employees earn the minimum wage, and they pay their income taxes / receive tax credits / pay social and health insurance contributions like anybody else who earns the same wage. (The details of that obviously depend on the country.) Furthermore, the jobs are long-term by design. The proposal makes a lot of sense in my book. At the very least, we have to get away from the ridiculous and cruel status quo where one part of public policy explicitly aims to generate unemployment[1] while another part of public policy is built on the assumption that unemployment is a failure of the individual. [1] The intended transmission mechanism of the monetary policy rule of raising interest rate to prevent high inflation is that the raise in interest rate slows the economy and generates unemployment to avoid a wage-price spiral.