Politicians from both parties commonly say that the nation needs to win back manufacturing jobs lost to overseas relocation.
Despite their ideological differences, both President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump before him praised infrastructure and its capacity to create jobs in construction and related sectors.
Yet an unexpected hurdle has impeded these ambitions: finding enough workers.
When Biden’s infrastructure law passed in November 2021, construction was already grappling with some 500,000 vacant positions.
Since then, the shortage has swelled by another 150,000 positions.
And while America has about 1.4 million fewer industrial jobs than it did 20 years ago, the Labor Department estimates that manufacturers have roughly 750,000 unfilled positions.
Behind these shortages is a steady increase in adult Americans not working, a number that exploded during the COVID lockdowns.
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Steven Malanga is the George M. Yeager Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a senior editor at City Journal. Adapted from City Journal.
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