Marketplace - Skilled labor scarcity

Episode Date: January 16, 2026

An AI-driven construction boom is coming, some hope. But to build all that infrastructure, the U.S. is going to need a lot more construction workers, plumbers, HVAC technicians, and other skilled workers. And President Trump’s immigration policies actively work against that goal. Also in this episode: Trump withdraws the U.S. from a key global climate change agreement, Americans shell out for at-home coffee setups, and Kai discusses the week’s economic headlines with Greg Ip at the Wall Street Journal and Amara Omeokwe at Bloomberg.Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.Marketplace is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

What do you think? Can we sort through what happened in this economy in six, maybe six and a half minutes? We're going to try from American public media. This is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizzdahl. It is Friday today. This one is the 16th of January. Good as always to have you along, everybody. Well, here we are. Another Friday in the American economy. Tell you what, though, it has been an interesting. week. Lots to talk about it. Not a whole lot of time. Amara Moquay's at Bloomberg. Greg Ipp is at the Wall Street Journal. Hey, you too. Hey, Guy. Hello, Kai. Amara, you get to start. You've had going on a week to think about it, as we all have. Where are you? What do you make of Chair Powell's video from last Sunday, the Justice Department going after the chair, all of that good stuff. Yeah, I mean, this was really a remarkable week for Fed coverage.

it started with that extraordinary video and statement from Chair Powell, really pushing back forcefully on this Department of Justice investigation that has been opened up into the Fed. And it was just truly remarkable. I think, you know, when Powell is asked about this question of Fed independence and all the pressure and attacks that he and the institution have faced from President Trump and his allies, you know, he always kind of gives the same response. You know, we just stick to our job. You know, we're trying to do what's in the best interest of the American people. So to see him really push back forcefully and say, like, this is a pretext. Like, this investigation is about the fact that the president wants us to do his bidding on monetary policy. It was just, it was really

remarkable. And then to also see some of the bipartisan pushback to see Republicans come out and say, you know, that this is inappropriate and really kind of criticize this investigation. Really, we're starting to see a lot of things that we have not seen since President Trump return to office when it comes to this question of Fed Independence. I'll tell you, I was on an airport parking shuttle bus, and I think I startled the whole bus when I watched that video and exclaimed quite loudly. Greg, if you wrote this week that it's not actually about Powell, it's about the next guy in the job. Talk a little bit more about what you mean. Oh, sure. So this investigation of Chair Powell needs to be seen in the context of repeated efforts

by Trump and his allies since basically he took office to get the Fed. to lower interest rates by more. And nothing else has worked yet. Job owning the Fed hasn't worked. Accusing trying to fire another governor over alleged misrepresentations on her mortgages hasn't worked. So this is simply his latest attempt. Now, as Amara is saying, you've seen bipartisan defense of the Fed, and in fact, some of the people responsible for the decision seem to be trying to disassociate themselves from it. But I would get caught up in that because what I think is going on here is a message from Trump and his folks to this Fed chair and the next Fed chair, which is if you get crosswise with this president, if you set interest rates in a way that displeases him, you can expect the

same treatment. And that has got to affect the judgment and the behavior of the next Fed chairman. So, Amera, let's talk about the next guy. The president at a White House event this morning made sort of an off-the-cuff remark about Kevin Hassett, the head of the council of economic advisors, and who until this morning had been widely expected, and I said as much on this program, and clearly I was wrong. Hacett was the inside guy for Powell's job. And Trump basically said, Kevin,

we're going to keep you here at the White House for a while. What do you make of that? Well, I think that you never know with President Trump, the decision is never going to be final until it comes out of his mouth. And I think we can probably expect more of this. who's up, who's down, until he makes the ultimate decision. I do think that it does kind of reflect where we are with this question of this investigation and Fed independence, because I think the problem that Kevin Hassett was always going to have was what Greg was talking about. Is this a person

who is going to be fully committed to Fed independence, or is he going to be more open to taking the president's policy preferences on board? Will he enjoy the confidence of investors and his fellow policymakers. And I think because HACID has been so in line with President Trump on so many issues and even on this investigation didn't really come out and condemn it, right? The questions about his credibility were ramped up this week after we learned about this investigation into the Fed now. So, Greg, I will admit that what I'm about to ask you about is not my original thought. I first got it from Tracy Holloway over Bloomberg. And the genesis of it is this. I really expected, and I think a lot of people did too, that the markets were going to go haywire on Monday because of the news of the

Justice Department going after the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. And nothing happened. And Triggs' point is, you know, maybe there's just too much chaos, too much volatility, too much just backing and forthing. And bond market in particular is just sitting on its hands because there's just too much volatility and they know what to do. So they're a little bit paralyzed. I was surprised that there was no market reaction. What do you think? I actually look at it a little bit differently. You know, the implications of a politicized Federal Reserve, there's actually two cross-cutting implications to it. One is that if you have lower interest rates because the Fed Chair is trying to police a president, that actually has some immediate tangible benefits. Stock market investors

love lower interest rates. There are a set of other negative costs that are more in the future and somewhat less tangible, the possibility of higher inflation, more market volatility, less investor confidence. So the markets are always in some sense trading off these immediate tangible positives against these future sort of theoretical negatives. And that's one reason why you should never really expect the markets to respond violently in one direction or another. There's another factor too, of course, which is exactly as we were just discussing, there was a very strong pushback, you know, and financial spectrum against this investigation.

So a lot of investors might be concluding that nothing untoward is actually going to happen. I'm not personally convinced to that, but that might be part of what we're seeing. Yeah, this is a classic wait and see here. Mary, you got 30 seconds on this one. It's worth a mention here that the chair, while only one vote, is kind of first among equals, right? And the public messaging as to what the Fed does. Yeah.

And I think that big, there she is. Sorry, I thought we lost to. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you saw some Fed policymakers come out and say that as they were kind of discussing the situation, that, you know, the Fed chair is only one vote on interest rate decisions. And ultimately, if he's trying, if some future chair is trying to push the committee in a direction that they don't think that they should go, then other policymakers can push back. But I think the concern is that we've seen ever escalating attempts by the Trump administration to put pressure on the Fed. And so the question is, where does this stop?

stop and does it not stop until President Trump ultimately has his own people on the board who are more open to kind of bending the institution in the ways that he wants to. The mayor of Mulcoy at Bloomberg and Greg hip at the Wall Street Journal. Thanks you two on this Friday. Thanks, Kai. Thanks for having me. Wall Street ending this week down for the day, mixed the past five days. Details numbers when we get there.

There was a report out from BlackRock this morning, the giant money, management firm that took a pretty big swing. It said we're going to see as much as $85 trillion in global infrastructure spending over the next 15 years. The greatest period of construction in human history is the quote from that report. It'll be AI data centers, along with new bridges and modern water systems and updated roads. To build all of that, though, we're going to have to have skilled workers of which we do not have enough. Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes has that one. The electrical contractor Kelso Burnett is based in Chicago. last year, about a fifth of its revenue came from building new data centers,

and William Martin Jr., the manager at the company, expects that to go up. There's tons of them. There's probably six of them within driving distance of Chicago that are either happening or getting ready to start up. Martin says the unions he works with are stretching to get electricians, offering more pay to get them to come from other parts of the country, also trying to get older ones to put off retirement. And Sandra Lawson, author of that new Black Rock report, says, we're going to need more.

Not just electricians, but also HVAC technicians, plumbers, people who are skilled builders. The challenge, I think, over the next few years, is that the supply can't wrap up as quickly as demand is ramping up because many of these jobs require apprenticeship training, and that takes time. Here in the U.S., another factor is the immigration crackdown. Brian Turmail, a spokesman for the Associated General Contractors of America, a trade group, says some construction sites are being rated by ICE. That's one problem. Another is the elimination of temporary protected status for some immigrants. And that means that person who was legally authorized to work and the company had every right and was lawfully allowed to hire them last week,

they have to let them go this week. We are actually making it harder for firms to build not easier when we shrink the size of the workforce. To grow the size of the workforce. of the workforce, Turmell says we need more skills training in schools so that future workers are exposed to careers in construction. I'm Stephanie Hughes for Marketplace. One of the first things President Trump did when he got back into office almost a year ago now was to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Again, that is, in case you'd forgotten the commitment that nearly every country on this planet made to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius.

Now he's gone a couple of steps farther down that path, saying the United States is going to leave the original 1992 treaty that underpins the Paris Agreement. Marketplace is Amy Scott, the host of our climate podcast, How We Survive, explains what that might mean for the climate and for American competitiveness. In June 1992, President George H.W. Bush signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change at the Rio Earth's summit. It was the first global treaty to explicitly address climate change with the goal of stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions to prevent dangerous human interference in the climate. There are those who say that economic growth and environmental protection cannot be compatible. Well, let them come to the United States. We're in the 20 years since then so. After unanimous Senate approval, the U.S. became the first industrialized nation to ratify the treaty. Few would call

Paul Bush, a climate leader. He built his fortune in the Texas oil industry and resisted setting targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But the framework he helped negotiate set the table for global cooperation and eventually led to the landmark Paris Agreement. The Framework Convention on Climate Change is the foundational climate treaty for the world. Every nation is a part of it. Joanna Lewis is a professor of energy and environment at Georgetown University. And while it serves to organize important international negotiations, it actually doesn't itself bind countries to anything. Lewis has attended many of these negotiations as an observer.

She says for three and a half decades, through Republican and Democratic administrations, the United States has played an influential role. And ultimately, the United States has very little. to lose in being a part of the framework convention, but potentially a lot to gain in terms of influencing the international response to climate change. And pulling out opens the door for other countries to fill the vacuum, including China, which has made huge investments in solar energy and electric vehicles. UN climate chief Simon Steele called Trump's decision a colossal own goal that will only hurt the U.S. in the form of more costly disasters,

and less affordable food, energy, and insurance. Some worry that U.S. withdrawal will prompt other countries to reduce their participation. But Kaveh Gilenpour, at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions in Washington, says that hasn't happened yet. Countries realize that the science is there. The impacts are getting worse in every country of the world. And countries also realize where the economic opportunities are. And Gillenpour says economics will be.

continue to drive a transition away from fossil fuels as the cost of renewable energy continues to fall. Leaving the Framework Convention is just the latest example of U.S. retreat on climate. The Trump administration is also pulling the U.S. out of the IPCC, which produces the leading scientific assessment of climate change. It's gutted investments in wind, solar, and EVs, and rolled-back regulations on emissions, all in the name of boosts. oil, gas, and coal production, which the administration says will lead to American energy dominance and lower prices for consumers. David Hart is a senior fellow in climate and energy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He says U.S. innovation on renewable energy hasn't ground to a halt.

There are a couple of areas that the current administration strongly favors, notably nuclear power and geothermal power that are aligned with climate goals and could still be areas of U.S. strength going forward. But Hart says current U.S. policy will slow the pace of the energy transition. This week, an independent research group said U.S. greenhouse gas emissions increased last year after two years of declines. And that was before Trump's policies had a chance to take full effect. I'm Amy Scott for Marketplace.

Coming up. Everybody benefits with just a little bit more flexibility. I know I do, but first, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrial's down 83 points today, 2 tenths percent, 49, 359. The NASDAQ gave up 14 points, less than a 10%. 23,515, the S&P 500, basically flat 69 and 40. For the five days gone by, the Dow dipped 3 tenths percent. The NASDAQ off seven-tenths percent.

The SEP 500 dropped four-tenths of 1%. The start of the NFL playoffs has boosted sports betting on prediction markets like Hal She and Polly Market. That's according to Bloomberg, thus digital gambling company, Draft Kings, down 8% on the day. Flutter Entertainment, which runs Fandul, off by 4 and 4 tenths of 1%. Bonds down yield on the tenure T-note 4.23%. You're listening to Marketplace. This Marketplace podcast is supported by Intuit QuickBooks.

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I'm Kai Rizdahl. It's been an up and down six or eight months for American coffee drinkers. President Trump's tariffs on coffee-growing countries last year led to, as tariffs do, higher bean and thus latte prices. And then as he does, the president changed his mind and carved out some coffee exemptions on those tariffs. Import taxes or not, though we are still drinking coffee, especially at home, the National Coffee Association, big coffee, if you will, says the number of people who own coffee-making appliances is up sharply since 2020. Rachel Wharton's at Wirecutty. She wrote about our caffeine gadgets the other day. Thanks for coming on.

Thank you so much for having me. I'll tell you, until I read this piece, I considered myself a coffee snob, but clearly I'm just a piker compared to some of these folks. They are spending money, a lot of money, on new coffee stuff for their kitchen counters. Yes, and their drawers and their cabinets and everything else. We're going to get to the whole,

how much space do people have in their kitchens thing in a minute. But let me ask you, first of all, where this trend is. is coming from. And we all know that like Starbucks cost you five and a half bucks for a lottes, but it's got to be more than just cost, right? Yes, there's actually a lot of reasons, but I think the biggest one was staying at home during the pandemic when everyone got into the art of crafting everything, food, cocktails, sourdough, making pizza, and coffee was a big part of that. You could just like really dial in on the pursuit of perfection and making it. And now we still work from home.

Well, that's true. We do. And we're still drinking coffee. About that pursuit of perfection, First of all, I was interested to read in this piece that there is such a thing as a coffee recipe, which we'll get to in a second. But with the exception of French presses, there's a lot of people buying a lot of fancy machines and often not cheap machines. Not cheap at all. Like thousands of dollars. You could even do like 10,000 if you get it built into your fancy kitchen space. Yeah, that's a whole other level. Talk to me about these coffee recipes, though.

What are people trying to do? What are they doing to, I guess, improve that more? morning cup of Joe. So recipes is literally ingredients and methods, same as with the recipe for anything else you would cook. And it can get down like the size of the grind, the exact temperature of the water, how long the perfectly sized grinds are in touch with the water. And then some people add like minerals and like to try to change the flavor of their

water or filter their water. So all those things go into the recipe. Seems like a lot. Now talk to me for a second about all these appliances and where people put them. You write for wirecutter, of course. You also write about kitchens and stuff like that for the real estate section of the times. I mean, not everybody's got all the counter space. Yes.

Actually, I just did the story about beverage centers where it's like this is a new obsession in American kitchens where people are kind of like they get mini fridges or built in like drawer fridges. Or they like create little spaces in their kitchen for their kind of like their obsession over a certain kind of beverage. And most often it's coffee. So people are buying like little cabinets to put all their coffee. gear on or clearing out space in their own cabinets, you know, because, I mean, it's just become their passion. Let me ask you just, let's step back from coffee here for a minute. Are we not, do you suppose, at peak appliance somehow?

I mean, there's a gadget for everything now. Yes, you are absolutely correct. And when I talk to kitchen designers and interior designers for homes, they are absolutely over this trend. They've had to build out appliance garages in people's houses and put all kinds of plugs and like roll out. They are very much ready for people to, to, like, downsize countertop appliances or move it to your stove altogether. I bet. What about you? You a coffee person? Are you a tinker? What do you do? Yes. I am a coffee person, but I hit all levels. In fact, I'm proud to tell you

that I had instant coffee right before this call, but I have everything. I got multiple pour oversets. I just got myself this beautiful all-mechanical machine called a mocha master. It looks like a drip machine, but it actually makes like pour over quality. Multiple grinders, manual and electric. Be honest with me. Can you really tell the difference? Yes, you definitely can. And I think that's part of this trend with coffee is that you can like, you can just keep getting

closer and closer to a better tasting coffee and you can be like, well, I'm going to make the grind just a little bit bigger and you can taste the difference and so on and so forth. But then you never get to the perfect cup, do you? No. And I think that that gives you something to live for, right? It really makes, like, you can just always keep getting into it. Get into the different new thing, you know, because you was like, what is life, but a series of hobbies and passions. Fair enough.

Rachel Wharton at the New York Times. Rachel, thanks a bunch. I appreciate your time. Oh, thank you so much for having me. Life in this economy is a lot right now. Work in this economy can be a lot right now, too. I know this isn't like a new issue, but with overall stress levels where they are for a whole lot of people, Finding any kind of balance can be hard.

So here with today's installment of our series My Economy. I'm Jill Johnson. I am an executive and ADHD leadership coach in the Silicon Valley in California. I help with things like time management, organization, and overall work-life alignment. Before I became a coach, I worked in sales work. roles both in consumer goods and in tech. I traveled frequently. I met with buyers all over the country. I really, really enjoyed my job, but it was demanding work. I was away from home for quite a while. And when I was pregnant with my second child, I realized that I wanted more work-life

alignment, more time with my kids. But I didn't know how to change careers. So a friend of mine suggested I join a women's circle and it really sparked an interest in coaching as a profession for me. And I started executive coaching in 2017. My ADHD focus emerged when I noticed my executive clients who had ADHD had specific struggles that my certification couldn't speak to directly. Someone may be an excellent individual contributor, but when they move up to a management position, that is often when someone with ADHD may start to struggle. So I pursued ADHD coaching certification so I could understand the difference between a neurodiverse brain and a neurotypical brain. I think that our corporate culture would benefit from being more flexible. People with ADHD are amazing innovators.

I don't see what a corporation has to lose by letting a superstar employee come in at 10 versus at 9 or work from home for a few days. These are simple ways that everybody benefits with just a little bit more flexibility. My favorite part of my job is I get to come to work knowing. that I'm helpful, knowing that people will walk away from our calls, feeling more supported, and we'll have real tools that will help them feel more satisfied and more successful in their own life. Jill Johnson, she's in Palo Alto, California. If you're feeling like you need a little more work-life alignment and you want to talk

about it, you could go to Jill, sure, or you can come to us. Let us know how things are going, would you? Marketplace. This final note on the way out today with apologies to Benjamin Franklin in which nothing is certain in life but death, taxes, and advertising. Saw this on Axios, that OpenAI is going to start test running ads on chat GPT. It's free and most basic subscription levels. Those ads were, by the way, all but inevitable because the company just needs cash. CEO Sam Altman is on record as saying OpenAI is going to be spending more than a trillion with a T dollars to build out its.

infrastructure over the next couple of years. Our theme music was composed by B.J. Leaterman. Marketplace's executive producers, Nancy Fargolly. Joanne Griffith is the chief content officer. Neil Scarborough's vice president, general manager. I'm Kyle. I'll have ourselves a great weekend, everybody. We will be back on Monday. This is APM. Hey, it's Dave O'Brien, a host of the Marketplace Morning Report. It has been one year since the costliest set of wildfires in California history, U.S. history, and by at least one Cal, Cal the history of the world, 16,000 structures were destroyed, most of them homes. I can quote your

figures about insured versus uninsured losses measured in billions. But as people in the fire zones face year two, we go from macro to micro. I'm checking in with the neighbors on one street in Altadena, where 15 homes were destroyed on a single block. These are my own neighbors. I lost a home on that street, too. Join us for on the ground reporting as we hear from people still dealing with insurance, getting permits, finding contractors. One guy had to go through 30 contractors to find one with the right skills he could afford. Plus, for most, rebuilding is taking years. How do people find the money to live elsewhere? Listen to the Marketplace Morning Report using your favorite podcast app.