WordPress pagination and Post Navigation not working on home page

The query var for pagination on a static home page is not paged, but rather page. https://codex.wordpress.org/Pagination#static_front_page

Static Front Page

If the pagination is broken on a static front page you have to add the “paged” parameter this way:

<?php 
if ( get_query_var( 'paged' ) ) { $paged = get_query_var( 'paged' ); }
elseif ( get_query_var( 'page' ) ) { $paged = get_query_var( 'page' ); }
else { $paged = 1; }

$the_query = new WP_Query('posts_per_page=3&paged=' . $paged); 
?>