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.
The labor-force participation rate started a somewhat erratic descent after peaking in 2000 at 67.3%, plummeting to a low of 62.4% of adults in 2015.
It fell further to just 60.8% during the pandemic.
Today, more than 100 million adults are not working or looking for work, up from about 95 million pre-pandemic.
Expanding government benefits correspond with the declines.
Two programs in particular, Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income (for non-working adults without income), support more and more Americans.