Too few childcare workers and the extreme cost of childcare are hardest on rural families. Utah is an example.

The childcare shortage is more dire in
rural areas. (Photo by Kracken, Unsplash)

Across the U.S., roughly 51% of American families live in a childcare desert, and 70% of rural parents report struggling to find any licensed caregivers with an opening, according to a new survey from the Center for American Progress. And even when parents are lucky enough to find a provider, they often struggle to afford it.

Both issues — the cost of care and the childcare worker shortage — are particularly acute in Utah, where "licensed providers meet only about 36% of the need, with rural communities facing significant shortages," reports Mark Richardson of UPR, which serves Utah and Southern Idaho.

Casey Peeks, the center's senior director of early childhood policy, told UPR, "You can make childcare free for every family living in a rural community tomorrow, but that's not going to solve the access." Peeks said that while addressing cost is important, developing and supporting childcare workers is equally vital.

Like many other states, the lack of childcare workers hurts Utah's treasury. "The childcare shortage costs Utah an estimated $1.3 billion each year in wages and productivity," UPR reports.

Utah lawmakers have been working to address childcare expenses by "expanding tax credits for employers that provide childcare, increasing the Child Tax Credit, and extending paid maternity leave for state employees," Richardson explains. But none of those changes increase the number of childcare workers.

To increase the number of childcare providers, the profession needs to be reassessed both in terms of importance and wages. Hailey Gibbs, associate director of the center's early-childhood policy team, told UPR that workers are often seen as getting "paid to play." Richardson adds, "The annual cost of childcare in Utah is between $7,000 and $10,000. A childcare worker is paid about $15 an hour on average."

Policymakers and voters need a better understanding "about child development and the needs of young children," Gibbs told Richardson, "and also the returns that children see in their education, in their health outcomes, even in their adult earnings when they have these kinds of really enriching early opportunities.”

Richardson adds, "Gibbs said the data shows the need for comprehensive solutions that address both cost and availability, starting with better wages for childcare professionals."

JBS beef meatpackers in Colorado plan strike over pay and company charges for protective equipment

JBS is the number one beef producer in the U.S.
(JBS photo)

American consumers are paying at or near record prices for beef, while nearly 3,800 workers at a JBS beef meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colorado, say little of the extra cash Americans are shelling out is going into their wallets, and they're planning to go on strike next week, reports Tom Polansek of Reuters.

The planned strike ‌"pits a workforce made up largely of immigrants against the world's largest meat company, and it has already driven ranchers to deliver cattle to alternate facilities," Polansek explains. "Meatpackers, including JBS, benefit from climbing prices but also must pay ​record costs to buy cattle to slaughter."

Despite livestock costs, JBS is still posting significant profits. Polansek notes, "JBS in November reported third-quarter profit of $581 million, ⁠down from $693 million a year earlier.

Kim Cordova, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 union that represents workers in Greeley, told Reuters, "While customers are paying more than they ever have, none ​of that is trickling down to the frontline worker that's actually doing all the heavy work."

Cordova said JBS fails to adhere to labor laws and has "not negotiated fairly on a new contract over the past eight months," Polansek reports. She told Reuters that workers want a wage that helps them keep up with inflation, and they "want the company to ​stop charging them for replacing protective equipment they wear to do their jobs safely."

For now, JBS has denied Cordova's claims and is standing by its contract offer. JBS told Polansek, "It is strong, fair, and consistent with the historic national contract reached in 2025."

Meanwhile, cattle feeders are moving where they plan to sell their livestock. One feeder told Polansek, "We've ​got way more kill space than finished cattle ready ​to slaughter."

Secretary of Agriculture plans to have all food stamp beneficiaries recertify to receive benefits

Recent SNAP spending peaked around 2020 during the Covid pandemic. (The Conversation graph, from USDA data)

The secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, announced last week that all Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients will be required to recertify to continue receiving benefits. 

Rollins said recertification is needed to help root out fraud and corruption in the SNAP program, formerly known as food stamps, reports Grace Yarrow of Politico. 

Rollins told Newsmax that she plans to “have everyone reapply for their benefits, make sure that everyone that’s taking a taxpayer-funded benefit through . . . food stamps, that they literally are vulnerable and they can’t survive without it.”

The most common types of SNAP fraud include applicants who lie about their living or financial situations to qualify for benefits, enrollees who trade their food benefits for cash and criminals who "skim" EBT cards to steal their benefits.

Rollins did not give a process or timeline for all SNAP beneficiaries to recertify, but she has "teased an announcement of a new plan to overhaul the program in the coming weeks," Yarrow writes.

President Donald Trump maintained that SNAP is intended for people who can't afford the most basic grocery items and are unable to work.

He told Fox News, "SNAP is supposed to be if you’re down and out. . . But people who are able-bodied can do a job — they leave their job because they figure they can pick this up, it’s easier. That’s not the purpose of it.”

Although SNAP spending peaked at $128 billion during the pandemic, U.S. taxpayers still paid $100 billion for the program in 2024, which served roughly 42 million Americans. 

Federal and state cuts to child care subsidies leave lower-income Americans with few options

Child care centers can be high-labor, low-profit businesses.
(Photo by McKinley Hess via Hechinger Report)

To prepare for federal budget cuts, some states have opted to slash their early learning programs. The overall reductions to child care subsidies have left lower-income parents struggling with higher co-payments and fewer slots, while child care providers face unexpected pay reductions and delayed payments.

"Colorado, Maryland and New Jersey recently stopped accepting new families into their child care assistance programs," reports Jackie Mader of The Hechinger Report, which covers education. Indiana and Arkansas announced lower reimbursement rates for child care providers serving lower-income households.

Many U.S. parents with infants and preschoolers already contend with the scarcity and high cost of child care nationwide, but the difficulties are harder on poorer Americans. Mader explains, "Experts warn this trend in some states of scaling back early childhood investments is widening an existing nationwide disparity in the availability of affordable, high-quality child care."

Reduced and delayed payments to child care providers could further shrink the number of child care slots, which already don't meet current needs. Mader reports, "Child care programs are expensive to run and, with limited public support, providers rely heavily on tuition from parents to pay their bills."

Daniel Hains, the chief policy officer at the D.C.-based National Association for the Education of Young Children, told Mader, "Almost every state is facing a very, very, very significant pullback of federal dollars. . . . It’s going to result in lower quality care for children, or it’s going to result in families pulling back from the workforce and facing greater economic insecurity."

Changes to Social Security disability benefits will affect 50 to 60-year-old applicants

ProPublica graphic, with data from SSA, Master Beneficiary Record, 100% data; USPS geographic data; and Census Bureau, Population Division, 2023 estimates of resident population.

Changes made to Social Security disability benefits by the Trump Administration could harm 50 to 60-year-old applicants “without a high school or college education who have, for decades, toiled in physically grueling jobs,” Eli Hager reported for ProPublica.

“The five states where the highest proportions of people rely on these benefits are West Virginia, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama,” Hager wrote.

Currently, applicants who are at least 50 years old are given priority to redeem disability benefits due to their age. The changes made to the program would mean that age would no longer be a factor in determining eligibility for the benefits.

A senior administration official (who requested anonymity) explained that the current rules reflected the job economy of the 1970s, which mostly relied on manual labor. Now that the internet has created more sedentary jobs, 50-year-olds have more options.

Another change would “modernize the job listings that Social Security’s disability adjudicators and judges use to decide if there’s work available in the U.S. economy that a manual laborer could do despite physical impairments — like a low-skilled desk job at a computer or driving for Uber or DoorDash,” Hager wrote.

But Hager added that Michelle Aliff, who provides expert testimony for Social Security disability hearings, said in an interview that “an oil field roustabout in his 50s isn’t going to just sit down at a computer for work without additional training.”

New $100K skilled-worker H-1B visa fee could mean fewer Indian doctors to treat rural residents

One in five immigrant doctors in the U.S. is of 
Indian origin. (Photo via BBC News)

The Trump administration's new $100,000 skilled-worker H-1B visa fee could leave fewer Indian doctors to treat rural populations. "One in four doctors providing care in the U.S. are foreign-trained, and recent data shows that most of them practice in the vast, underserved rural areas where American graduates are reluctant to work," reports Savita Patel of BBC News.

For the roughly 50,000 India-trained physicians currently working in the U.S., the new visa fee does not apply; however, there are worries around "whether the steady supply of Indian medical professionals to the U.S. would continue in the future," Patel explains. "According to research, one in five immigrant doctors in the U.S. is of Indian origin."

And while the administration may eventually decide to exempt medically trained workers from the new fee, currently, "there is no indication that any category of workers, including those in the medical field, has been exempted," Patel reports.

The American Medical Association asked the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristin Noem, to reconsider the new fee, "emphasizing that the fee hike could discourage hospitals from hiring H-1B doctors, affecting future supply pipelines and limiting patients' access to care in communities that need it the most," Patel adds.

Supporters of the fee hike insist it will keep "American jobs for Americans," Patel adds. But research on which jobs foreign medical workers take shows they are filling positions that American doctors don't want -- in regions that are "remote and low-income."

Given the financial straits many rural hospitals are already in, "any hike in the fee would make it harder to bring in new clinicians from abroad," Patel writes. Dr. Bobby Mukkamala, president of the AMA, told Patel, "We have heard from health systems who say this fee would be devastating."

Sharpie marker manufacturing thrives in Tennessee after moving all production back to U.S.

The Maryville plant makes 1.8 million fine-tip Sharpies 
a day. (Sharpie graphic)

With planning, investments, and an eye on domestic manufacturing, Newell Brands now produces almost all its Sharpie markers in Maryville, Tennessee, using all American-made pieces, except for the felt tips, which are made in Japan, reports Natasha Khan of The Wall Street Journal.

During the early 2000s, Newell moved some parts of Sharpie manufacturing overseas; however, around 2018, company leadership introduced a strategy to move all Sharpie marker production back to the company's 37-year-old Maryville plant.

Overall, the successful move "took close to $2 billion in investments across the company, thousands of hours of training and a total overhaul of the production process," Khan explains. "Newell did it without reducing the employee count, and without raising prices."

Some of the company's transitional success is attributed to robotic advances, but Newell didn't replace people with robots. Instead, it kept its "employees who knew the company and converted their jobs to roles such as automation engineering," Khan adds. For instance, robots now pack boxes and employees "fix the robot instead of packing boxes."

In many cases, Newell paid for the additional education and training employees needed to be prepared for new roles. Khan writes, "The average wage at its Maryville facility, which employs 550 staff, has gone up some 50% over the past five years — without a change in head count."

The Maryville factory floor is "marked squares to delineate space for more lines to shift to America, such as Sharpie’s Clearview highlighter; it will move back from China in coming months," Khan adds. "The factory operates around the clock, making 1.8 million fine-tip Sharpies a day."

Rural families worry that Head Start will die a 'slow death.' Many parents can't afford to work without it.

Head Start participants are disproportionately rural. 
(Photo by Jackie Mader, The Hechinger Report)

For six decades, the federally funded Head Start program has helped low-income rural parents stay in the workforce by providing free child care and early education programming. But suggested cuts by the Trump administration have some families worried the program is slated for "a slow death," reports Jackie Mader of The Guardian. The program was earmarked for elimination in an "early draft of President Donald Trump’s budget proposal."

Although Head Start programs are found in communities of all sizes, its participants are disproportionately rural. "Nearly 90% of rural counties in the United States have Head Start programs," Mader explains. "Almost half of the 716,000 children Head Start serves live in rural congressional districts, compared with just 22% in urban districts."

Head Start has survived so far, but its services and employees have been reduced through staffing and funding cuts that began this past spring. "In early February, many Head Start programs were caught up in a federal funding freeze. Then the Trump administration fired about 20% of the program’s federal staff," Mader reports. The loss of support forced some programs to close, while others cut staff to stay open.

Head Start reductions have left communities and parents feeling uncertain about the future. Most parents who participate can't afford to work if they have to pay for child care, and the program employs several local people and small businesses.

Even though the Trump administration's 2026 budget proposal doesn't reduce Head Start funding, it did not increase the program's funding to allow for inflation, which "effectively amounts to a cut," Mader adds.

Laurie Todd-Smith, who oversees Head Start at the Administration for Children and Families, has not pushed for an increase in Head Start funding. Instead, she suggested that programs look for ways to be more efficient by eliminating Head Start offerings that other state programs already provide.

Some residents in rural Mason, Tenn., don't want a migrant detention center in their town, but it's coming anyway

At times, the town meeting devolved into the mayor, left,
shouting at citizens. (YouTube, WREG, Memphis, Tenn.)

Despite raucous pushback from residents and activists during a recent town meeting in Mason, Tenn., the evening ended with the mayor and council members approving agreements to transition the town's closed prison into a migrant detention facility managed by a private company.

"The first vote of the meeting resulted in approval for a contract with CoreCivic to resume operating the facility, which was closed in 2021," Adrian Sainz of The Associated Press reports.  "The second vote was to approve an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement."

Eddie Noeman, Mason's mayor, who emigrated from Egypt, saw reopening the facility as a way to boost the town's lagging economy. "Noeman said he wanted to bring jobs and economic development to the town," Sainz explains. "With a population of about 1,300, Mason is located about 40 miles northeast of Memphis. When it was open, the prison was the town’s largest employer."

Before the start of the contentious meeting, Mason board member Virginia Rivers said she was not in favor of the town being connected to an ICE facility. She told Sainz, "I don’t like what ICE stands for, how they treat the people.” 

Once the contracts were approved, CoreCivic released a statement touting all the benefits the center will contribute to the town, such as good-paying jobs and tax generation.

Overall, CoreCivic has a darker reputation in Tennessee. Sainz reports, "The company has spent more than $4.4 million to settle about 80 lawsuits and out-of-court complaints alleging mistreatment — including at least 22 inmate deaths — at four Tennessee prisons and two jails from 2016 through September 2024."

Boar's Head plant in tiny Jarratt, Va., will reopen soon, but the company's poor sanitation record remains a concern

Boar's Head positions itself as an upscale
company, but state inspections show many problems.

Boar's Head deli meat indefinitely closed its Jarratt, Virginia, plant last September after 10 people died and dozens were hospitalized after eating listeria-tainted liverwurst from the facility. The plant, which was the major employer in the small town of 600 residents, is now slated for reopening. But a closer look at other Boar's Head facilities reveals a troubling pattern.

Jonel Aleccia of The Associated Press reports, "Boar's Head plants in Arkansas, Indiana and elsewhere in Virginia have been flagged for the same kinds of sanitation problems that led to the outbreak, with the most recent report in June."

Inspections since the beginning of 2025 report problems with "meat and fat residue left on equipment and walls, drains blocked with meat products, beaded condensation on ceilings and floors, overflowing trash cans, and staff who didn’t wear protective hairnets and plastic aprons — or wash their hands," Aleccia reports. Similar conditions were repeatedly reported at the Jarratt plant prior to the nationwide listeria outbreak.

Recent inspection findings from Boar’s Head sites in Forrest City, Arkansas, New Castle, Indiana, and Petersburg, Virginia, "surprised outside food safety advocates who said that factory conditions should have improved," Aleccia explains. Instead, the reports "raise new questions about the company’s promises to address systemic problems."

Barbara Kowalcyk, who directs a food safety and nutrition security center at George Washington University, told Aleccia, "What jumped out to me is there is an organizational culture issue that needs to be changed. . . .Usually that culture has to start at the top.” 

Company officials refused to talk to the AP about the recent inspections, Aleccia reported.

Meanwhile, the USDA has lifted its forced suspension of the Jarratt facility, and the company is hiring for positions at the plant.

After an immigration raid takes more than half of its labor force, a meatpacking company looks at ways to begin again

Immigration agents raided Glenn Valley Foods on June 10.
(ICE photo via Nebraska Examiner)

After Immigration and Customs agents arrested roughly half its labor force, meatpacking company Glenn Valley Foods in Nebraska is looking for ways to start over. 

The company had religiously used the federal system, E-Verify, to cross-check employees' eligibility to work in the U.S., but federal agents still arrested 76 workers "who they said were undocumented immigrants using false identification," reports Eli Saslow of The New York Times.

Before the raid, Glenn Valley Foods was expanding with "new hires, new manufacturing lines, and new sales records [as] one of the fastest-growing meatpacking companies in the Midwest," Saslow writes. "But, in a matter of weeks, production had plummeted by almost 70%. Most of the workforce was gone." 

Now, the company is piecing together a new workforce with a new human resource manager, Alfredo Moreno, who believes "the only way to truly prevent fraud is to scrutinize IDs with black lights and magnifying glasses to make sure they aren't fake, and then interview each potential employee in person," Saslow reports. "The government maintained that Glenn Valley employees had been using IDs that were stolen." 

The raid cost Glenn Valley days of business, but slowly, a barebones crew formed, and some lines restarted. Meanwhile, Moreno and his tiny HR staff are still using E-Verify along with their additional verification measures to try to hire as quickly as possible. Still, almost none of their applicants are U.S. citizens.

Since the raid, the company's owner, Gary Rohwer, has "received phone calls from strangers who accused him of 'stealing American jobs,'" Saslow writes. "But Nebraska [has] a work shortage, with only 66 qualified workers for every 100 positions. . . . 'There are some jobs Americans don’t want to do,' Rohwer tried explaining to one caller. 'We’re caught up in a broken system.'"

When temperatures sizzle, outdoor laborers often continue to work; a new OSHA rule could help keep them safe

To help outdoor workers stay healthy amid U.S. heat waves, last year the country took steps "towards protecting millions of workers from the impacts of extreme heat on the job," reports Frida Garza of Grist. In July 2024, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration published "its first-ever draft rule to prevent heat illness in the U.S. workforce."

OSHA's proposed rule would "require employers to provide access to water, shade, and paid breaks during heat waves," Garza writes. "In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 986 workers died from heat exposure on the job from 1992 to 2022, or about 34 per year."

While the Trump administration has sought to undo several workplace regulations, the drafted heat protection rule has moved forward. "The agency is currently in the middle of soliciting input from the general public about the proposed policy."

Some labor experts say the proposal is moving through the process quickly, but labor advocacy groups "focused on workers along the food supply chain, say workers have waited too long for basic life-saving protections," Garza reports. "Even in a best-case scenario, regulations would not be on the books for another 12 to 14 months." In some cases, it takes several more years for a rule to be fully implemented.

Given the lengthy timeline, several advocacy groups are working to educate employers and give outdoor workers a voice in public forums. The group "WeCount" in South Florida "has spearheaded multiple campaigns to draw public attention to how sweltering temperatures impact outdoor workers in the region, including plant nursery workers," Garza explains. "WeCount members are trying to publicize the risks that agricultural workers take on."

Getting consumers to care about their workforce enough to take action is one of the best ways outdoor employees can lobby for heat protections. Garza reports, "The Fair Food Program, first established by tomato pickers in 2011 in Florida, has won stringent heat protections for farm workers in part by building strong support for laborers’ demands among consumers."

Steelworkers considered this county 'too rural' to live there; local officials launched a plan to get them to put down roots

Mississippi County Courthouse, 
Osceola, Ark. (Wikipedia photo)

When U.S. Steel decided to make Mississippi County, Ark., its home base, local officials thought people would move to the area, bringing their spouses and families with them. They didn't. But the county didn't give up on leveraging its steel boom as way to address ongoing decline. 

"In recent years, this vast county in the Mississippi Delta has transformed itself into one of the largest U.S. hubs for steel production and reliable, well-paying steel work," reports Chao Deng of The Wall Street Journal. "Lately, it has shifted to an even harder task: getting those workers to move there."

Mississippi County was once a bustling farm region, but over several decades, families have left, and towns have fallen into decay. "Many steelworkers still see the county as too remote and rural to live in, so they choose to commute long distances every day, often from neighboring states," Deng explains. 

To get steelworkers and their families to move to Mississippi County, the county is "pushing a host of initiatives to increase its population and shore up its economic base," Deng writes. "The chief program, called 'Work Here. Live Here,' offers home buyers money toward down payments on new or existing property, as long as they live and work in the county for four years. . . . About 160 families have purchased homes with help from it."

Mississippi County location in Ark.
(Wikipedia map)

So far, the county's plan has been successful. Cliff Chitwood, the county’s economic-development officer, said about "250 new homes have gone up in the county in the past 14 months, with more than half of them bought under the 'Work Here. Live Here' initiative," Deng writes. Chitwood told Deng, “It doesn’t sound like many until you realize it’s more than we had in 20 years."

Immigrant farm workers from Mexico once had a clear path to work in the U.S. from the 1940s to the 1960s

Braceros congregating at Rio Vista 
(Library of Congress photo via Offrange)

A look back at American history reveals a significantly different perspective on Mexican immigrants coming to the United States to fill labor shortages. Beginning in the 1940s and stretching into the mid-1960s, the U.S. recruited thousands of Mexican immigrants to work on U.S. farms.

In Texas, the National Historic Landmark "Socorro’s Rio Vista Farm" operated as the "Rio Vista Bracero Reception Center," which was a designated point of entry for thousands of Mexican workers who entered the U.S. as "part of a temporary labor program," reports Marianne Dhenin for Offrange. "The arriving Mexican workers were known as braceros from the Spanish word for arm, brazo, roughly translating to 'one who swings his arms.'"

Mexican farm worker recruits were able to enter the U.S. by signing up for the Bracero Program. "The program was designed to recruit skilled agricultural laborers from Mexico to mitigate labor shortages in the United States resulting from American farm workers enlisting during World War II and, later, the Korean War," Dhenin explains. During World War II, the U.S. government incarcerated thousands of American Japanese farm workers, which increased the need for Mexican labor.

Workers who wanted to join the Bracero Program "applied at intake stations across Mexico," Dhenin writes. These men "made significant sacrifices in pursuit of economic opportunities in the U.S. Many hoped that higher wages across the border would allow them to provide for those they left behind."

Becoming a Bracero wasn't as easy as just signing up. Applicants were required to undergo extensive medical and psychological testing in Mexico before "being invited to make the trip northward through Mexico and across the border," Dhenin reports. Braceros were often transported into the U.S. in cargo trains "without seats, windows, or water stops along the way."

During the 1950s and early 1960s, the "barracks on Socorro’s Rio Vista Farm served as dormitories, offices, and a mess hall to house and process the more than 80,000 braceros who passed through each year," Dhenin explains. "It was one of five long-term bracero reception centers in California, Arizona, and Texas. . . . Over the lifespan of the Bracero Program, more than 4.6 million contracts were issued." A total of 30 states participated in the Bracero program.

A rural community bets on a beef slaughterhouse dedicated to changing the industry to attract American workers

The Sustainable Beef plant is the size of 10 football fields.
(Sustainable Beef photo)

In a bid to oust the slaughterhouse industry's bad reputation and attract American workers, Sustainable Beef opened a brand new plant in rural North Platte, Neb. 

The old rail town needed the financial lift and the "company believes the gleaming plant will appeal to locals who never would have considered doing such work," report Scott Calvert, Arian Campo-Flores and Patrick Thomas of The Wall Street Journal. "Town officials are pinning their hopes on [the] slaughterhouse, which promises an economic jolt but represents a risky bet. . ."

A shiny building isn't the only benefit Sustainable Beef offers -- the company has upended some slaughterhouse mainstays to increase its appeal. "The facility’s single daytime shift lets employees attend their children’s sports games after work," the Journal reports. "The company touts ergonomic work stands and individual lockers — even the plentiful toilets are an upgrade from typical meat plants." Pay starts at $22 per hour, which is average for the area.

Even with its upgrades and no third shift, Sustainable Beef faces stiff competition, possible worker shortages and a tight beef market. The company is "taking on the Big Four meatpackers —JBS, Tyson Foods, Cargill and National Beef — that control 85% of the beef industry," according to the article. "Nebraska faces persistent labor shortages, as workers age out or leave. . . . Cattle herd sizes have hit a 75-year low."

Location of North Platte, Neb.
(Wikipedia map)

But the company's investors have a shared goal of giving the industry's "Big Four" a run for their money. The new plant is "the size of 10 football fields, aims to process 1,500 head of cattle daily, with most of the beef going to Walmart, a minority stake investor in the project," the Journal reports. "The plant expects to hire about 850 workers by year’s end, which would make it the city’s third-largest private employer."

Fearing the possibility of crime brought on by immigrant workers, some North Platte residents pushed against the deal, but city leaders planned for predictable changes. Calvert, Campo-Flores and Thomas write, "The city is offering developers incentives to build housing, and up to 2,000 units are in the pipeline. Schools are boosting English as a Second Language instruction. The police department has outfitted officers with portable translation devices."

WSJ's full story includes Sustainable Beef's colorful beginnings in North Platte and details on how this plant is pushing competitors to upgrade their employment offerings.

E.V. charging stations help fuel mega gas station growth. Not every town wants one.

Sheetz location in Romulus, Mich. 
(Sheetz photo via WXTZ News in Detroit, Mich.)

Despite controversies over their impact, big gas station chains such as Buc-ees and Sheetz are adding locations in small communities and residential spaces across the U.S. The need for more E.V. charging stations, with their longer "fill" times, is part of the reason.

"As battery-powered cars become more common on roadways, more gas stations are installing chargers alongside old-fashioned pumps," reports Kevin Williams of The New York Times. "E.V. charging takes time, so gas station operators are turning their stores into shopping centers where people can spend time — and money — while they wait for cars to charge."

Area residents have a range of reactions when they hear their community is being considered as a mega gas station location. "The sheer size of the businesses has turned off some communities that don’t want the heavy traffic, bright lights and 24/7 activity," Williams explains. "When communities object to Sheetz’s moving in, the company isn’t fazed. . . . It knows there are communities that want its business."

Restaurants in small to mid-sized cities have pushed against mega gas stations because they offer extensive food menus and may even include a drive-thru. Williams reports, "Craig Dunaway, the chief operating officer of Penn Station East Coast Subs, said his restaurant chain was fending off gas station businesses like Sheetz."

The city of Farmington Hills, Mich., which has roughly 86,000 residents, "rejected Sheetz’s proposal this year to take over a space once occupied by Ginopolis, a restaurant that called Elizabeth Taylor and Bob and Delores Hope its customers, after several contentious meetings," Williams writes. But the smaller town of Romulus, Mich., welcomed the development.

Jeremy Taylor, a long-time Romulus resident, enjoys what Sheetz offers. He told Williams, "It’s been a long time since we’ve had something this good in Romulus. There’s nothing out here.”

Bringing back U.S. manufacturing jobs would take 'years, if not decades'

The U.S. produces domestic clothing on a smaller
scale. (Hybrid Storytellers photo, Unsplash)

Part of the driving force behind President Donald Trump's far-reaching tariffs is to push American businesses and consumers to make and purchase U.S.-manufactured goods. While American production and purchasing appeals to many Americans, the question remains: Is America up to the task?

"In many industries, the undertaking would take years, if not decades. The United States lacks nearly every part of the manufacturing ecosystem — the workers, the training, the technology and the government support," reports Alexandra Stevenson of The New York Times.

Trump's made in America push opens up a bigger trade discussion about where products are made vs. where they are sold. The logistical and financial effort required to re-shore all the moving parts, which are often produced across the globe, would present a challenge.

Sailex, a fabric and clothing manufacturer, is an example. The company has a jean-making facility in Los Angeles that produces roughly 70,000 pairs of pants per month. But that comes with a tradeoff. Stevenson explains, "The operation works only because Saitex runs a much bigger factory and fabric mill in southern Vietnam where thousands of workers churn out 500,000 pairs of jeans a month."

Sailex owner Sanjeev Bahl believes the U.S. "can make stuff again . . . . But his experience highlights how hard it would be," Stevenson reports. "There are no mills in America on the scale of what the industry needs, nor major zipper and button suppliers. The cost of running a factory is high. Then there is the labor problem: There just aren’t enough workers."

If the U.S. wants to revive its manufacturing powerhouse status, that goal "would have to include immigrants seeking that same opportunity in the United States," Stevenson explains. "At Saitex’s Los Angeles factory, most of the workers come from countries like Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador."

Even if the U.S. could find enough workers, the cost of labor is a barrier. Stevenson reports, "It is hard to make things in great volume in America. . . .For Bahl, it boils down to the cost of a sewing machine operator. In Los Angeles, that person gets paid around $4,000 a month. In Vietnam, it is $500."

If Americans are desperate for manufacturing jobs, why are so many factory jobs vacant?

Reshoring American manufacturing could take time
and big money. (Photo by Brice Cooper, Unsplash)

Despite the Trump administration's full press effort to revive American manufacturing, it's unclear if Americans want factory jobs. "American manufacturers say they are struggling to fill the jobs they already have," reports Greg Rosalsky of NPR's Planet Money. "According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are nearly half a million open manufacturing jobs right now."

Although a tight labor market explains some of the labor shortage, it's also a product of economic and educational circumstances. Rosalsky explains, "Manufacturers can't fill these jobs overnight because they require workers to have particular skills. And it's not just skills needed to work on assembly lines. . . . Manufacturers also employ people to do research and development, engineering, design, finance. . ."

Politicians typically tout factory work because it can "provide good jobs and career ladders for people without a college education," Rosalsky writes. "However, many manufacturing jobs these days actually require college degrees. . . That said. . . half of the open manufacturing jobs don't require a bachelor's degree. And manufacturers say they are also struggling to fill those."

A fair question manufacturers may need to revisit: Do they pay enough? Higher wages might "convince workers to invest in acquiring coveted skills and enter the manufacturing workforce," Rosalsky adds. "But the higher pay that Americans demand to work in manufacturing is one of the big reasons that many manufacturers left America in the first place."

Oren Cass, the chief economist and founder of American Compass, a conservative think tank, "believes that tariffs can help even the playing field with foreign competitors," Rosalsky reports. "And he stresses that one of the keys to reshoring manufacturing — while maintaining well-paying manufacturing jobs — is higher productivity."

In late April, Trump "issued an executive order aimed at 'preparing Americans for high-paying skilled trade jobs of the future,'" Rosalsky writes. 

Skilled labor started recruiting from high school shop classes; high school graduates can make over $60,000

Skilled trades can offer training during high school
and a good-paying job upon graduation. (Adobe Stock photo)

Skilled labor training is helping some high schoolers land jobs with big pay before they even graduate. "Companies with shortages of skilled workers look to shop class to recruit future hires," reports Te-Ping Chen of The Wall Street Journal. "Elijah Rios won’t graduate from high school until next year, but he already has a job offer — one that pays $68,000 a year."

While the U.S. shortage of skilled labor has been building over time, baby boomer retirements have pushed trade-based companies that need a pipeline of trained professionals to "turn to creative recruiting strategies," Te-Ping explains. "More businesses are teaming up with high schools to enable students to work part-time, earning money as well as academic credit. More employers are showing up at high school career days." The renewed interest in hiring from the trades has helped revive high school shop programming.

Younger workers generally are more at ease with incorporating technology into their work, which is another reason trade recruiters are stepping up their "shop class" connections. According to the WSJ article, "Employers say that as the skilled trades become more tech-infused, they anticipate doing even more recruitment at an early age, because they need workers who are comfortable programming and running computer diagnostics."

One of the best things employers can do to "get a foot into high schools early on is by offering internships, says Roxanne Amiot, an automotive instructor at Bullard-Havens Technical School in Bridgeport, Conn.," Te-Ping writes. She told the Journal, “I tell them, don’t call me for students when they graduate, grab them now when they’re 16 or 17, or I have nobody to work for you.”

The recruitment opportunities and wages that trade professions offer signal a dramatic shift away from the "college-for-all mindset," according to the article. "[But] it’s important to make sure students are made aware of all their options, says Steve Klein, a researcher who focuses on vocational education. . . . At the same time, as interest in vocational education rises, he worries that sentiment runs the risk of swinging too much in the other direction."

In rural Maine, farmers worry migrant workers will be too afraid to show up for work and crops will rot in the fields

Blueberries burst forth during Maine's early summer,
but they need to be harvested quickly. (Adobe Stock photo)

As the Trump administration steps up its immigration and deportation efforts, Maine farmers who rely on immigrant labor to harvest seasonal crops such as wild blueberries are concerned about labor shortages. Some farmers worry that no matter how legal their past immigrant employees may be, fears about deportation will keep them from "showing up to rake [blueberry] fields — out in plain sight," reports Joyce Kryszak of The Maine Monitor. Without immigrant workers, Maine farmers say they can't bring in all their fields within the short window to harvest before crops begin to rot.

Harry Ricker and his wife, Nancy, own Ricker Hill Orchards in the small town of Turner, Maine. Each year the couple pays to participate in the H-2A visa program to employ "dozens of hard-working apple pickers each harvest season, mostly from Jamaica," Kryszak writes. They don't think they can hire enough non-immigrants to complete their apple harvest. Harry Ricker told Kryszak, "There are a lot less local people that want to do it, so we have to have [the H-2A] program. Without it, we’ll just be out of the industry. We go away.”

Meanwhile, state officials are working to help Maine businesses stay on top of visa program requirements and changes. "Patrick Woodcock, the executive director of the Maine Chamber of Commerce, told Kryszak, "Regardless of the merits of the polic[ies], we really do want to ensure that employers understand how to be in compliance. There may be employees that were authorized to work that may be affected by changes and may not be authorized to work now or in the coming months.”

Local apple and blueberry farmers aren't the only ones worried. "Agricultural farmers of all types . . . and fisheries. . . have come to rely on the largely Latino migrant and year-round immigrant communities," Kryszak reports. "A 2015 Maine Department of Labor . . . survey, the most recent report available from the Department, found that 56% of migrant farm workers were from Mexico, with others from Haiti, Canada, Honduras, El Salvador, and the Philippines."