We had 3 corporate executives over for dinner and wine last weekend (Software, Heavy Manufacturing, Healthcare) Some good ribeyes, and a few bottles of first growth Bordeaux's we got into quite a conversation about industry and what is happening inside the largest corporations in the country. All 3 told the same story (with slightly different details), labor shortages, and not just for them, but in the supply chain, and even materials. Of course the software industry is always short engineers, but they are having problems with hardware too, and their expansion is limited.
All 3 agree the slowdown in Immigration into the USA the last 5 years is the biggest issue (legal or Illegal) We just do not have the skilled people to staff the open positions currently, so companies are struggling to recruit, struggling to get supplies, struggling even at the material level. These guys all felt the past administration rhetoric really made the USA a less attractive place for the worlds best and brightest to go for study or work. Statistically we are getting less of the cream of the crop from China, and India, as well as Europe to fill our demand for skilled people, and it took 2-4 years to really start to burn us (delayed a year by Covid-19), these executives talk of skilled engineers leaving their companies to go back home (India, China, Italy), etc. Those that think Immigrants leaving is a good thing, need to look at the top engineering departments at any industrial company, then look at the deans list of any major University. There are a lot more Chen and Chan, then there are Smith and Jones taking the top academic spots.
A little disclosure, I am a lifetime republican, and so are many of our friends, however the 2020 election for many of us was a rebellion against our party for the direction it had taken, and trends they had started. During the voting, I felt weird voting for democrats, something I had not done before, but January 6th confirmed we absolutely made the right choice, Saving democracy is more important than where we stand on a few issues, and Trump's big lie had motivated a Mob that set out to damage or destroy democracy. The Flag, and the Constitution mean more to me than how I feel on certain social or economic issues. For me its country over person, and a few bad eggs have stunk up the republican party to the point I cannot imagine ever supporting them again regardless whether I agree with some of their policies or not.
Most American technology innovation has immigrants in the middle of it, from Elon Musk, and what he has done, to Werner Von Braun and his checkered past. Closer to home GM's top battery engineers are immigrants, Even our defense contractors are full of Immigrants where the real engineering and innovation is done. Look at Elon Musk, only one student in his physics class was clearly smarter then Musk, his name was Robin Ren, consistently beat Elon Musk academically (can you guess where Robin Ren was from?) Yup, China. He was one of the top students in China, and ended up working for Musk a decade later, and establishing Tesla's China operations (Their most successful).
The construction industry problems are different, but the same, in construction it's also a labor shortage, but most of those workers we have lost in that industry have questionable status in the USA. Between border tightening , and the same nasty rhetoric, many of these workers no longer try to get into the USA, and just settled back into their native country, therefore leaving a huge vacuum of work that needs to be done here, and is not getting filled which put pressure on the entire blue collar workforce, we see this in a lot of small businesses, restaurants, material suppliers, retail stores, etc. It's an awful time to own a construction business, became you cannot control your cost, and are totally at the beck and call of the few remaining workers. This is why I decided to call it a career, and drastically scale back my businesses, it's just too hard to be successful right now. Plus, for decades I loved the business, and had fun at work every day, but it became much less fun the last 4 years.
Man, we are way off topic here,