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Axios AM Deep Dive: What's Next
Axios What's Next, our new weekday newsletter will be your guide to the waves of change in how we work, play and get around. This Axios AM Deep Dive gives you a taste of what we have in store...
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Immigration's role in America's labor shortage
America's labor shortage crisis has been exacerbated by immigration restrictions that have reduced the number of both skilled and unskilled workers.
Between the lines: Most of the labor scarcity blame has been aimed at expanded unemployment benefits, hard-to-find child care and low wages. But there is a fourth leg to the stool.
By the numbers: Immigrant and non-immigrant visas issued during the year ended October 2020 were down by nearly five million, or 54%, from 2019.
- 572,587 fewer people received temporary or permanent worker visas (H, L, O, P, Q, J, and E) in 2020, a 44% drop from 1.3 million in 2019.
- The most significant drop-offs were for J and Q visas, for work- and study-based programs like au pairs, camp counselors and cultural exchange. Those were down 68% and 63%, respectively.
- H-visas for specialty work,temporary agricultural and non-agricultural work fell by the smallest percentage (24%).
For context: The U.S. had a 6% job opening rate in April, with the highest rates of 11.6% rate in arts, entertainment and recreation, 10.1% in leisure and hospitality, and a 9.9% rate in accommodation and food services — which combined works out to over 3.1 million unfilled jobs.
Timeline: Almost all of this decrease can be tied to Trump administration decisions to close legal immigration avenues in the pandemic's early months, while also tightening rules and enforcement of undocumented immigration.
- Freezes were put on green card applications in April, and most temporary work visas were halted in June.
- President Biden reversed the green card decision and recently let the worker visa ban lapse.
- But it will take time for the immigrant worker pool to be refilled, particularly as potential immigrants from certain countries remain blocked due to COVID-related health concerns. Moreover, many U.S. embassies and consulates continue to face massive backlogs of visa applications, often without enough resources to resume regular operations.
What they're saying: E.J. Dean, the third-generation owner of New England carnival operator Fiesta Shows, says that he's had to limit the number of rides offered this season because he's been unable to secure his typical supply of temporary workers from overseas (particularly from South Africa).
- "I'm trying to get people locally, but I've never seen things so tight," Dean explains. "It’s not even about the pay. People set up interviews and then they don't show up for them."
- Jon Baselice, VP of immigration policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, adds: “COVID-related travel restrictions continue to prevent many employers from meeting their workforce needs and they are causing significant business disruptions for many companies, especially smaller seasonal businesses across the country that are dealing with acute workforce shortfalls.”
The bottom line: The U.S. economy cannot fully recover from the pandemic if employers can't find enough employees.
Toyota to cease donations to election objectors
Toyota has announced it will cease donations to Republicans who objected to the certification of President Biden's electoral college victory.
Driving the news: The company revealed its decision, first reported by the Detroit News, in a statement on Thursday, saying it understood that its PAC's donations to those objectors, which far outpaced those of any other company, "troubled some stakeholders."
- Toyota's statement came less than two weeks after Axios reported the Japanese automaker donated $55,000 to 37 election objectors, the most of any corporate PAC by a significant margin.
Between the lines: Toyota faced immediate backlash over its donations, which went to some of the most outspoken election conspiracy theorists in Congress.
- On Thursday, the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group founded by former GOP political consultants, unveiled a TV ad attacking Toyota over its donations.
What they're saying: "Toyota is committed to supporting and promoting actions that further our democracy," the company said in its statement.
- "Our bipartisan PAC equally supports Democrats and Republicans running for Congress," it added. "In fact, in 2021, the vast majority of contributions went to Democrats and Republicans who supported the certification of the 2020 election."
Climate solutions could cause their own problems
World leaders are pondering unprecedented moves to combat global warming by speeding up the transition to clean tech — but they're also learning more about the potential downsides of those changes.
Why it matters: The changes will be needed to avoid the most dire climate scenarios. But there are potential environmental, human rights, and geopolitical risks to shifting how we get around, the way the electric grid operates, and how everything from cement is made to buildings are constructed.
What they're saying: "It's important to recognize that decarbonizing our economy will not be small and beautiful; replacing all of our fossil fuel infrastructure with clean energy will be big and messy," Zeke Hausfather, director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute, told Axios via email.
- "Getting to net-zero [emissions] by 2050 will require building a huge amount of new things incredibly quickly, and will entail lots of conflicts with some traditional environmental priorities."
The big picture: Perhaps the best-known problem companies and countries are facing is how to source the critical minerals needed for batteries that will be used to power electric cars, planes, energy storage devices, and more.
- Mining for these minerals on land — including cobalt, lithium, manganese and graphite — can cause pollution and are often unsafe. In some places, like in China and the Congo, it caninvolve forced or child labor.
- Efforts are underway to consider how to mine the seabed for rare Earth minerals, but here too, there's potential for environmental destruction — in this case, a danger to sea life.
- The minerals are needed for electric vehicle batteries, but they're also in demand for other critical projects. These include the construction of vast arrays of wind turbines and solar photovoltaicfarms.
Cleanly and ethically producing batteriesis far from the only challenge facing countries as they move to decarbonize.
- Other technologies also threaten biodiversity by extracting resources and taking up large amounts of land — including biomass energy with carbon capture and storage, known as BECCS. This involves extracting energy from biomass, such as certain crops grown for this purpose, and capturing and storing the carbon.
- Mining for critical minerals is also more energy intensive than mining for bulk metals — which means they could actually increase carbon emissionsas demand grows.
- Right now we're hurtling toward an economy that will be far more dependent on a steady supply of these materials, but they're not evenly distributed worldwide, presenting geopolitical challenges. For example,the vast majority of the world's supply of refined cobalt comes from China, and China produces the most rare Earth minerals overall.
- The U.S. is trying to mine more rare Earth minerals domestically or secure additional supplies abroad.
How it works: Since 2010, the average amount of minerals needed for a new unit of power generation has increased by 50%, according to an IEA report published in May.
- The IEA found that a scenario in which the world reaches net zero carbon emissions by 2050 "would require six times more mineral inputs in 2040 than today."
What's next: The IEA warned that there need to be "broad and sustained efforts" to improve the environmental and social performance of mineral supply chains.
- The report also recommends more recycling programs and stronger environmental and human rights standards that help steer economic rewards to responsible suppliers.
The bottom line: The decisions we make now to invest in new clean energy technologies and reduce greenhouse gas emissions will dictate how much warming-related disruption and damage we endure, and any associated clean tech complications we will experience during the next several decades.
- Ultimately, the concerns related to the energy transition pale in comparison to the far-reaching harms that would be caused by letting human-caused global warming to continue to escalate.