This article explores the role of social protection in contributing to sustainable employment in the context of the broader graduation debate. Many efforts to achieve graduation focus on the household or community level: helping households reach a certain asset and productivity level at which they are able to survive, and perhaps prosper, without support from cash transfer programmes; building assets at community level to provide public goods that increase economic productivity; and making communities more resilient to specific shocks and stress (for example, by supporting community soil and water conservation). However, it remains critical to focus on broader questions of employment and labour markets to understand how social protection programme design might impact on recipient households' wider job prospects, and to recognise that the feasibility and scale of graduation depend on wider factors such as labour demand and labour market structures, as well as on improving individual capacity and productivity.