Full Title: Labor Supply, Labor Demand, and Potential Labor Shortages Through New U.S. Clean Energy, Manufacturing, and Infrastructure Laws
Author(s): Jeannette Wicks-Lim and Robert Pollin
Publisher(s): Political Economic Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
Publication Date: February 5, 2024
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Description (excerpt):
Between November 2021 and August 2022, three major economic policy laws were enacted by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Biden. These three laws are the BIL (Bipartisan Infrastructure Law), the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) and the CHIPS (Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors) Act. In combination, the purpose of these three measures is to support a large-scale expansion of investments in the U.S. in the areas of clean energy, manufacturing, and infrastructure.
This report considers the BIL, the IRA, and the CHIPS Act with respect to their employment impacts within the U.S. economy. This report is a companion to the September 2023 report, Employment Impacts of New Clean Energy, Manufacturing, and Infrastructure Laws: Job Creation, Job Quality, and Demographic Distribution Measures. This previous report, as its title conveys, estimated the extent of job creation—i.e. labor demand—that will result through BIL, IRA, and CHIPS investments. The current companion study examines the employment impacts of BIL, IRA, and CHIPS from the perspective of labor supply—more specifically, the availability of workers within the U.S. labor market to move into the jobs that will be newly generated by BIL, IRA, and CHIPS investments.