[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 118-49
GROWING THE ECONOMY OF THE FUTURE: JOB
TRAINING FOR THE CLEAN ENERGY TRANSITION
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE
of the
CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 20, 2023
__________
Printed for the use of the Joint Economic Committee
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
53-818 WASHINGTON : 2024
JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE
[Created pursuant to Sec. 5(a) of Public Law 304, 79th Congress]
SENATE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Martin Heinrich, New Mexico, David Schweikert, Arizona,
Chairman Vice Chairman
Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota Jodey C. Arrington, Texas
Margaret Wood Hassan, New Hampshire Ron Estes, Kansas
Mark Kelly, Arizona A. Drew Ferguson IV, Georgia
Peter Welch, Vermont Lloyd K. Smucker, Pennsylvania
John Fetterman, Pennsylvania Nicole Malliotakis, New York
Mike Lee, Utah Donald S. Beyer Jr., Virginia
Tom Cotton, Arkansas David Trone, Maryland
Eric Schmitt, Missouri Gwen Moore, Wisconsin
J.D. Vance, Ohio Katie Porter, California
Jessica Martinez, Executive Director
Ron Donado, Republican Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Opening Statements of Members
Page
Hon. Martin Heinrich, Chairman, a U.S. Senator from New Mexico... 1
Hon. David Schweikert, Vice Chairman, a U.S. Representative from
Arizona........................................................ 10
Witnesses
Mr. Courtenay Eichhorst, Business Manager, UA Local 412 Plumbers
and Pipefitters, President, New Mexico Building Trades,
Albuquerque, NM................................................ 4
Ms. Tracy Hartzler, President, Central New Mexico Community
College, Albuquerque, NM....................................... 6
Dr. William Beach, Senior Fellow, Economic Policy Innovation
Center, Former Commissioner, Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Washington, DC................................................. 8
Dr. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, President, American Action Forum, Former
Director, Congressional Budget Office, Washington, DC.......... 9
Submissions for the Record
Prepared Statement of Hon. Martin Heinrich, a U.S. Senator from
New Mexico..................................................... 32
Prepared Statement of Mr. Courtenay Eichhorst, Business Manager,
UA Local 412 Plumbers and Pipefitters, President, New Mexico
Building Trades................................................ 34
Prepared Statement of Ms. Tracy Hartzler, President, Central New
Mexico Community College....................................... 44
Prepared Statement of Dr. William Beach, Senior Fellow, Economic
Policy Innovation Center, Former Commissioner, Bureau of Labor
Statistics..................................................... 54
Prepared Statement of Dr. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, President,
American Action Forum, Former Director, Congressional Budget
Office......................................................... 62
GROWING THE ECONOMY OF THE FUTURE: JOB
TRAINING FOR THE CLEAN ENERGY TRANSITION
----------
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2023
United States Congress,
Joint Economic Committee,
Washington, DC.
The hearing was convened, pursuant to notice, at 2:16 p.m.
in Room 216 Hart Senate Office Bldg., before the Joint Economic
Committee Chairman, Martin Heinrich.
Senators present: Chairman Heinrich, Klobuchar, Hassan,
Kelly, Welch, Schmitt.
Representatives present: Vice Chairman Schweikert, Beyer,
Moore.
Staff: Nicolas Aguelakakis, Christina Carr, Tess Carter,
Ron Donado, Michael Farren, Sebi Devlin-Foltz, Tomas Gallegos,
Colleen J. Healy, Jeremy Johnson, Brooke LePage, Mirella
Manilla, Jessica Martinez, Michael Pearson, Christopher Russo,
Jeff Schlagenhauf, Alex Schunk, Douglas Simons, Lia
Stephanovich, and Garrett Wilbanks.
Chairman Heinrich. This hearing will come to order. I would
like to welcome everyone to today's Joint Economic Committee
hearing, titled ``Growing the Economy of the Future: Job
Training for the Clean Energy Transition.''
Today's hearing will begin with my five minute opening
statement, a statement from Vice Chairman Schweikert as soon as
he arrives, and each of our four witnesses. We will then
proceed to questions, alternating between parties in order of
Member arrival. Members are reminded to keep their questions to
no more than five minutes, and now we'll get to opening
statements.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARTIN HEINRICH, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
NEW MEXICO, CHAIRMAN, JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE
Chairman Heinrich. In the last two years, the Biden
administration and Democrats in Congress have taken significant
action to advance a transition to a robust clean energy
economy. We made historic investments in clean energy in the
Inflation Reduction Act, as well as the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law.
These investments have directly increased the demand for
workers in a range of clean energy occupations. Whether it is
manufacturing workers building batteries, building wind
turbines, building solar panels, or plumbers and pipefitters
installing heat pumps, there are opportunities here for
millions of Americans.
Looking at just a few of these jobs, the Bureau of Labor
Statistics predicts that over the next decade, we will need to
fill at least 735 job openings for electricians, 425,000 for
plumbers and pipefitters, nearly 400,000 for HVAC technicians
and 100,000 for utility line workers to meet demand. Some
estimates put the increased demand for workers even higher.
This demand for skilled trades people is a once in a
generation opportunity to grow the middle class if, if we can
train enough workers to meet the demand. These are careers
people can build a family around in their home communities, and
they don't require a four year college degree or for that
matter, the college debt that sometimes accompanies a four year
degree.
These jobs feel a lot like my dad's career as an IBEW
lineman. His work keeping the lights on in our community was my
family's ticket to the middle class. It gave us economic
stability. It gave my parents security in their retirement.
Right now, we are unlocking that same pathway, that same sort
of ticket to the middle class for even more families.
Our current workforce shortages are a real limiting factor
in growing the advanced energy economy. That is why we need to
invest in proven career training pathways. We need to work
collaboratively with labor unions, with community colleges,
with private industry. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is
investing $72 million in programs to train folks for clean
energy careers, by partnering with existing institutions.
Community colleges like Central New Mexico Community
College, offer a range of workforce training programs, and one-
year certificates that get participants into careers quickly.
The Inflation Reduction Act also encourages the use of
registered apprentices. These are programs that pay people to
learn technical skills on the job and in the classroom,
allowing employers to train and invest in their future
employees.
By investing in programs that create opportunities and
teach the skills necessary for this energy transition, we can
ensure that we meet workers where they are. We are already
seeing these investments produce results. New Mexicans in these
skilled trades have already built some of the largest clean
energy projects in the entire nation, and we are currently
beginning constructional on a regional transmission line and a
wind generation project larger than the Hoover Dam.
This one single project will be the largest clean energy
project ever built in the western hemisphere, and this same
project will also have a substantial economic benefit in the
Vice Chairman's State. From wind towers to solar racking
hardware to utility-scale solar trackers, we are also
manufacturing the components to build out the energy
transition.
And in order to continue to lead on this front, we need to
invest at the federal level in more research and development.
We need to invest in national laboratories and universities
that are making fundamental discoveries in challenging sectors
like industrial heat and aviation.
Broadening our clean energy research and development will
help strengthen our workforce, and it will help workers build
the skills needed for the clean energy transition, and it will
help us grow America's middle class, while leading the world to
a brighter, cleaner future. I am looking forward to hearing
more today from our witnesses, including two from my home state
of New Mexico, on ways to support and diversify our rapidly
growing clean energy skilled workforce.
I am eager to hear more about how we can better invest in
educational and apprenticeship pathways to clean energy jobs,
and how we can maintain American leadership in the industry
across the globe. I will now, since Vice Chairman Schweikert is
not here, I am going to hold for his opening statement, and we
will begin with our witnesses, and we will start with Mr.
Courtenay Eichhorst.
[The opening statement of Chairman Heinrich appears in the
Submissions for the Record on page 32.]
Mr. Courtenay Eichhorst is a business manager for UA Local
No. 412 and president of the New Mexico Building and
Construction Trades Council. UA Local No. 412 represents
plumbers, pipefitters, HVAC service technicians and pipe
welders in New Mexico, as well as in the El Paso, Texas area.
Members of the union are involved in a range of projects
that support the clean energy transition, and prior to serving
as the union's business manager, Mr. Eichhorst served as its
training director. In his role as president of the New Mexico
Building and Construction Trades Council, Mr. Eichhorst leads
and advocates for an alliance of craft unions.
I am going to introduce all of our guests, and then we will
hear from them with their opening statements in the same order.
President Tracy Hartzler is the president of the Central
New Mexico Community College. President Hartzler has held
several leadership roles at the college since 2015, and under
her leadership the college has implemented a skills to jobs
marketplace for students. She continues to expand opportunities
to build a skills to workforce pipeline that fosters a
partnership among students, national employers and community
colleges.
Prior to her time at the college, President Hartzler worked
for the New Mexico legislative Finance Committee, New Mexico
Interstate Stream Commission and the U.S. Senate Committee on
Indian Affairs.
Dr. William Beach is a senior fellow at the Economic Policy
Innovation Center, EPIC, and the former Commissioner of the
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Dr. Beach is also a Coffin Fellow
at the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation. Prior to these
roles, he worked at George Mason University, the Senate Budget
Committee, the Heritage Foundation and Sprint United.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin is the president of the American Action
Forum and the former Director of the Congressional Budget
Office. Dr. Holtz-Eakin has also served on the Council of
Economic Advisors as the chief economist and the senior staff
economist, in addition to directing domestic and economic
policy for the John McCain Presidential Campaign, and serving
as Commissioner of the Congressionally-chartered Financial
Crisis Inquiry Commission.
Mr. Eichhorst, let us begin with your testimony, and then
we will go down in the order of introductions. The floor is
yours.
STATEMENT OF MR. COURTENAY EICHHORST, BUSINESS MANAGER, UA
LOCAL 412 PLUMBERS AND PIPEFITTERS AND PRESIDENT, NEW MEXICO
BUILDING TRADES, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO
Mr. Eichhorst. Good afternoon, Chairman Heinrich and
Committee Members. My name is Courtenay Eichhorst, and I am the
business manager for the United Association Local No. 412,
which represents just over 2,000 plumbers, pipefitters and HVAC
workers in New Mexico and El Paso, Texas.
I also serve as the president of the New Mexico Building
Construction Trades Council. I would like to thank the
Committee for the opportunity to share my thoughts on how the
best in class apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs
offered by the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters
and the Building Trades are empowering our unions to meet the
workforce demands driven by the clean energy transition and
transforming the lives of workers in the process.
The high tech manufacturing plants and emerging clean
energy technologies that have been targeted for support by
recent federal legislation requires sophisticated workers with
specialized trade knowledge to construct and maintain. At the
UA, we see every clean energy job as an opportunity to train
workers for the next clean energy job. This is exactly why
attaching labor standards that include apprenticeship
utilization to federal investments in clean energy is so
important.
To meet the demands for skills workers, the UA and North
America's building trade unions put our money where our mouth
is. Together with our signatory contractors, we invest nearly
$2 billion each year in apprenticeship and journey level
training programs. Of this amount, the United Association or
the UA, as we commonly refer to our union, alone invests about
$280 million annually.
These training investments consist entirely of private and
non-taxpayer dollars. Unlike the traditional four year college
program, the five year apprenticeship developed by the UA and
other building trade unions provide individuals with the unique
opportunity to earn while they learn.
Apprentices in our programs are paid an increasing scale of
wages as they progress, receiving health care coverage and
becoming participants in retirement plans. They graduate as
journeymen and women, debt free and with skills that are in
high demand.
In addition to our gold standard apprenticeship programs,
the UA and other building trade unions are also increasingly
investing in pre-apprenticeship programs that can be designed
to help prepare high school students or individuals from under-
represented communities and others for a career in the trades.
Local 412 has numerous apprenticeship initiatives that have
proven to be highly successful in creating a pipeline between
the communities we serve and family-supporting careers in our
industry. More details about these programs are found in my
written testimony.
They include a 12-week accelerated weld program and a
partnership with 14 different high schools in remote areas of
New Mexico. Local 412 also partners with several local civic
organizations to provide apprenticeship readiness training. We
invest over 2.7 million each year at Local 412 in our local
training programs, which again consist entirely of private
dollars.
When I first took over the apprenticeship program in 2014,
we had a total of 88 apprentices. We now have over 440
apprentices, including 25 veterans, 32 women and 52 individuals
from the Navajo Nation. This large jump in apprenticeships
speaks for itself as to the success of our initiatives.
While I am exceptionally proud of the work that we have
done at Local 412, there are similar stories to be told
throughout the United Association. For example, this past June
the UA and Capture Point Solutions committed $310,000 to a new
pre-apprenticeship program in Vernon Parish, Louisiana, which
will create a training and employment pipeline between high
school juniors and seniors in Vernon Parish, and the new carbon
capture hub being developed in Central Louisiana.
The UA has also led the way in partnering with the U.S.
military, to train and place veterans into our apprenticeship
program through our award-winning VIP or Veterans in Piping
Program. This program, which is described in my written
testimony, currently operates in seven different military
bases, and since its inception has provided apprenticeship
opportunities for over 3,170 military veterans.
I would like to end my prepared testimony by sharing my
personal experience of coming up through Local 412
apprenticeship program, which I think illustrates the value of
earn as you learn. Unlike many of my fellow UA brothers and
sisters, I went through a four year college program and
obtained a bachelor's degree in Marketing and Sales from New
Mexico State University, before beginning my union
apprenticeship.
However, when I applied to Merrill Lynch for a job straight
out of college, I was told that I needed to get experience
first. When I heard this, I thought what was the point of my
four year college program if they did not provide me with the
experience I needed for a career. So I simply could not find a
job in New Mexico that paid well, and would provide me with the
training that I apparently still needed.
So ultimately I reassessed the path I was on and joined
Local 412 apprenticeship program. The journey that decision has
put me on has been immensely satisfying in giving other men and
women the same opportunity is what motivates me to focus on
expanding our apprenticeship training at Local 412.
In conclusion, the UA and the Building Trades are prepared
to meet the workforce demands of the clean energy transition,
because we have the best training programs and the best model
for delivering that training throughout--through our earn as
you learn approach. When programs like ours are linked to
federal funding through labor standards that require apprentice
utilization, the sky is the limit as to what we can build
together during this pivotal moment in the clean energy
transition. Thank you all.
[The statement of Mr. Eichhorst appears in the Submissions
for the Record on page 34.]
Chairman Heinrich. President Hartzler.
STATEMENT OF TRACY HARTZLER, PRESIDENT, CENTRAL NEW MEXICO
COMMUNITY COLLEGE, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO
Ms. Hartzler. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and Members of
the Committee. My name is Tracy Hartzler. I am the president of
Central New Mexico Community College or CNM. I also serve on
the board of directors for the American Association of
Community Colleges that is based here in Washington, D.C.
So thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today
to discuss the significant need for a much larger workforce
pipeline to support the accelerating growth of the clean energy
economy in New Mexico and certainly across the country. CNM
serves over 30,000 students annually, in about 200 certificate,
degree and training workforce programs that range from our
trades, our skilled trades to our arts programs that allow
students to transfer on to universities, but also to enter into
the workforce directly.
We welcome students from all backgrounds. We are a
Hispanic-serving institution, and we serve a significant
population of tribal bands and--members from our New Mexico
tribal bands and nations. Our students and learners include
high school students taking dual credit classes, both in trades
programs but also general education programs, and then also we
have adult learners who are seeking a quick way to enter the
workforce.
I want to share a story about one of our students named
Rita, who was struggling to make ends meet working in a
restaurant for tips and a low wage. But she realized with two
children, she could not really provide for them sufficiently,
so she decided to enter the clean energy industry.
She started in our electrical trades program, and within
two years completed that program, is now at a local electrical
company providing a range of services. She owns a car, she owns
a home. She is able to provide for a family, and there is no
question, as she would say, that trades was the game changer
for her. So that is what we hope for for all of our 30,000 plus
students we serve every year.
So when I think about Rita, and I think about all of you
who have community colleges throughout your district or your
state, most of your community colleges are serving students
like Rita. They are individuals who are seeking entry into a
good-paying career, not a job. They are looking for a way
forward and they come to community colleges particularly
because we have the resources, not only the training programs
and the academic programs, but we have the resources, those
critical student supports that are so helpful in wrapping
around that learner, to help them not only enroll but persist
and complete their program.
So just as we support our students like Rita, we also work
incredibly closely with our employers. We exist to serve local
workforce needs, and to grow our local economies. So we
frequently work with employers to spin up programs, to review
our programs, revise our programs, to make sure they are
continuously relevant not only in our existing industries that
are common, but in our new industries like our clean energy
industries.
CNM is not unique to this. All of the community colleges in
New Mexico, but again, all of your districts and states do the
same thing. We serve our students and then we serve our
employer needs to grow our local economies. So in my written
testimony, I highlighted the variety of associate degree
certificate programs in solar and wind technology that CNM,
many of the community colleges in New Mexico provide, including
Navajo Tech as well.
They focus mostly on installation and some of our
maintenance skills, but again these are entry points into a
career in an industry where we again continue to provide
upscaling and pathways for individuals once they enter those
industries.
So just as CNM's programming is evolving to meet changing
demands, that track record led us to a successful conversation
with an international company, which is choosing to move their
manufacturing facility to the U.S.
That company was able to take advantage of tax credits both
from the Inflation Reduction Act, also with many state tax
credits to not only build the facility, they are working with
federal and state-funded workforce development funds and
partnering with CNM to help train their 1,800 employees who
will be coming online in the next about 18 months.
Like most community colleges, we are challenged, I am
challenged with providing and developing strong, affordable
high-quality programming and supporting access to frankly
vulnerable students, students who are seeking a great deal of
support to enter into a workforce.
I mentioned most of our funding comes from non-recurring
sources. We have one-time funds that are critical to jump start
this training, and that came through a number of federal bills
that many of you supported in the last couple of years.
In addition, the American Association of Community Colleges
supports continuing the Strengthening Community College
Training Program and Strengthening Institutions Act. Those are
included in both the House and the Senate Labor Human Services
appropriation bills. We are pleased with those.
But we also seek recurring funding. We use some of that
from the federal and state government as well. Again, we also
are grateful for the support that the federal government
provides to our students who seek access.
So I would encourage the Congress to consider supporting
Workforce Pell, so that individuals who are seeking that quick
entry into the workforce and that quick start into a career
that is going to be successful for them and serve our
communities, including our clean energy sector, that they are
able to use federal grant dollars, in addition to a lot of the
other state supports that we are able to provide.
So with that, I just want to say that it is critical that
community colleges receive federal support for jobs programs.
There is no question that employers come to community colleges
to design and provide responsive programming, and that learners
come to us to find a better life, and the resources and the
programs they need to help them achieve their goals.
We are trusted, we are valued, we are capable, and that is
why employers and students come to us. So Americans clearly
understand the important role and value that community colleges
provide, and I think with the support that we need, I am
confident that we will be able to continue to provide the
workforce solutions that our communities and states require to
support the booming clean energy economy, not only in New
Mexico but across the country. Thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Hartzler appears in the Submissions
for the Record on page 44.]
Chairman Heinrich. Dr. Beach, the floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF DR. WILLIAM BEACH, SENIOR FELLOW, ECONOMIC POLICY
INNOVATION CENTER, FORMER COMMISSIONER, BUREAU OF LABOR
STATISTICS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Dr. Beach. Very good, thank you Mr. Chairman, Ranking
Member, Members of the Committee. It is a real pleasure to be
here and be on this panel with my colleagues, to talk about
this extremely important topic. I am just really pleased, Mr.
Chairman, to hear that you use BLS data.
The occupational series that BLS does is among the most
important and popular data that is produced by the Bureau, and
I was--when I was Commissioner, I tried to get as much done in
the environmental area as possible, because demand is growing
by leaps and bounds for that particular kind of data.
So let me talk about three challenges that I mention in my
written testimony and that I think are really in front of this
Committee and in front of the Congress when we think about how
we support that great demand for new labor in this growing
sector.
The three are, and I will start with program effectiveness.
I think this is a really important one. It is a classic one
when we are talking about government training programs. I am
sure you are all familiar with this. It turns out that directly
funded and managed training programs by federal agencies, job
retraining in particular, not so much adult education, which
seems to be quite effective, but training for a job or job
retraining, they just do not seem to be as effective as we want
them to be.
The people who enrolled in this training may be not typical
of the class of people that you would normally think needs the
training. So there is a self-selection problem, which is a
classic issue with the training programs. Not controlling for
that particular, what is called ``unobserved characteristics''
is what makes these appear to be effective, but really not
effective.
So how does Congress determine effectiveness, and here is
where you need to build this into your, into your legislation
if legislation moves forward. You need to have what are called
randomized tests. So you pick people who would be in the
program at random, rather than having them identify themselves,
and you pick people who are in the program and you pick people
who are not in the program, and then you follow them over time
to see whether these randomized picks actually are different,
did they have different outcomes.
When Mathematica did this study for the Department of
Labor, I was not at Labor at that time. It was just before I
started my term. They looked at a whole host of programs, from
job training, Job Corps, about 40 programs. They did these
randomized tests for a number of these programs. Sadly, they
did not find too many of them to be effective. What is
effective is what is happening in the private sector and
certainly in the joint efforts of labor unions and private
companies to train.
And so we need to study why are those effective I worked a
long time in the telephone industry, and I can tell you there
when I picked people to go into the training programs, I always
picked the ones who would succeed. So even the training
programs in the private sector need to be scrutinized pretty
carefully for effectiveness.
A second problem is source data. You are going to want to
have a lot of data that tells you what is the demand for these
jobs, and these data need to be produced by a statistical
organization. BLS stopped producing those data in 2011, and I
will be happy to discuss the reasons why.
At that time they--for the green jobs data, which they were
producing, they found that there were about 2.1 million green
jobs in the United States. That is 2011. I took the liberty of
just updating that number, and when you update that number for
the larger labor force, you get about five million green jobs
in the country.
There are many different ways of figuring out what the
green jobs are, but you are going to want to have that detail.
I produced a chart in my written testimony that lays out all
the occupational characteristics that BLS was able to produce.
It is crucial if you are going to pursue the area of green jobs
in a systematic way, as Congressional policy, that you have
those data in front of you.
But they are costly, and that is my third point. Congress
is severely challenged, as you all know. You are working on
this right now, to bring its fiscal house in order. You know,
we have had a 53 percent increase in publicly held debt. We
have had a 42 percent increase in outlays just in the last four
years, just unprecedented increases.
And when you--when you--what has paid for your increased
outlays? What has paid for that? Recent work by Robert Hall and
the Nobel Laureate Thomas Sargent indicates that only seven
percent came from tax revenues, 76 percent from bonds and 14
percent from money creation.
So to conclude, you have some challenges in front of you,
and I think you need to confront those honestly and directly,
and I am sure you will. Then you need to say how can we pay for
these jobs programs that we are going to fund? Clearly, given
the fiscal challenges, that kind of outlay needs to be offset
somewhere if you go forward with it. Thank you very much.
[The statement of Dr. Beach appears in the Submissions for
the Record on page 54.]
Chairman Heinrich. Dr. Holtz-Eakin.
STATEMENT OF DR. DOUGLAS HOLTZ-EAKIN, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN
ACTION FORUM, FORMER DIRECTOR, CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Dr. Holtz-Eakin. Chairman Heinrich, Vice Chairman
Schweikert and Members of the Committee, thank you for the
chance to be here today. Let me say just a few things briefly,
and then I look forward to answering your questions.
The notion of a green energy/clean energy workforce is
appealing, but it really lacks any analytic rigor. Granted,
there will be jobs, a lot of jobs in production, construction,
generation, transmission of clean energy. But those are really
just jobs in the economy, and there is nothing special about
them.
Sure, they could have some firm-specific or occupation-
specific skills that you need to have, but that is true all
through the U.S. economy, and it is a standard problem in
workforce development to develop and deliver those kinds of
skills to workers, so that they can be effective in their
careers.
So this is something that by and large we have confronted
before, and by and large there are enough private sector
incentives for firms to deliver that, to make sure that their
workers can be effective in their jobs, or other private sector
actors. As you heard from some already, unions and others
deliver that training.
So that, that seems to me to be the real lesson of where we
are right now, and it suggests several very simple principles
for policy going forward.
The first is there is no need to set up a large, new,
dedicated clean or green energy workforce development effort.
Instead, that notion should be put aside and existing routes of
training should be pursued. I would echo what Dr. Beach said
about the success of federal training programs.
If you look at things like the Workforce Innovation and
Opportunity Act and the Adult Displaced Worker Training
Programs there, in our work when we looked at that, what you
found is lots of people got trained for jobs that did not exist
anymore, and there was lots of demand in new jobs and those
people did not have the skills to fill them.
This is an area where there is going to be large demand and
new skills necessary. To rely on programs like that, which have
a terrible track record of delivering, would be a mistake.
Instead, all of the efforts should be on private sector
training, supporting these collaborative efforts that we have
seen across the country that have been successful for a long,
long time in meeting the labor force needs of local businesses
and using registered apprenticeships wherever possible, because
they have the best record of success there as well.
So I think this is an important topic and a good hearing,
and I look forward to answering your questions.
[The statement of Dr. Holtz-Eakin appears in the
Submissions for the Record on page 62.]
Chairman Heinrich. Vice Chairman, we held your opening, so
the floor is yours.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DAVID SCHWEIKERT, A U.S.
REPRESENTATIVE FROM ARIZONA, VICE CHAIRMAN, JOINT ECONOMIC
COMMITTEE
Vice Chairman Schweikert. Well you are a glutton for
punishment, and Mr. Chairman, I will do this real quick so we
can get to questions, because that would be much more
interesting.
We are actually happy to see you choose this as the
subject, one of the great kindnesses. One of the great
kindnesses is we have been going back and forth, and once again
I want to compliment Senator Heinrich's staff for working so
well with, you know, our staff on this and that, because there
had been some history, for those of you who had been on the
Committee before, where sometimes we were cranky towards each
other.
But one of the things we tried actually looking at is what
is the definition of a green job, and this may go to my friend
with the history in BLS. If we actually as a Committee or even
for staff, maybe it would be really smart for us to build sort
of a universal definition.
The reason for that is you get those of us in the idiot--I
mean political class who get up all the time and say this bill
will create this many jobs or this many jobs. Would not it be
nice to actually have at least a common benchmark, whether it
be on the right or left, of what the hell we are talking about?
The second thing is, and we have a couple of things going
on in the House and I apologize. We are a little distracted but
I am working on it. But and it may be 20-25 years ago there
were actually some attempts to do some pretty detailed research
of the job training programs of the 1990s.
And the juxtaposition, I remember it was a long study. It
was an academic one, and it talked about programs that had
reached out, and I love my community college. I'm from
Maricopa. I got an AA from my community college, biggest I
think it may be in the country.
But the data set that came from that said the government-
sponsored training that used these educational facilities, what
primarily was happening is when the graduates came out, they
had to be retrained at the business level for the business
mechanisms there, that maybe the fastest way we reach
productivity and participation in, as you want to call it, the
green economy, is not a surreptitious route through a
government-sponsored educational foundation mechanisms
training, community college, but getting people straight to
have that relationship with an employer, and have the training
there for that methodology, technology, types of equipment and
what their contracts are.
And that--I hope that is where we are going to head, is an
understanding. If this is really about workers, how do we help
them have a productive life? And I will find that study,
because I know--I am a packrat. It is in one of my binders. But
I remember even then many years ago the cost per job of the
training was outlandish, and a fraction of that might have been
a much healthier incentive.
But it has to be carefully designed for the relationship
between that employee and employers, to have sort of a modeled
apprentice program. You could actually steal some of the
brilliance some of the industrial unions have created, saying--
that allow it to be an individual contract with an individual
employer to learn their skill set, because it turns out if I
get my electric certificate on how to put up electric
photovoltaic panels, I may be able to go do other types of
electrical.
We need to make sure that this job training has the
flexibility that our arrogance, which often leads us down a bad
path, is green energy, every type of job, is going to probably
look different five years from now. Just like it did five years
ago, how do we make our education flexible so we are making
people so they have a productive life instead of we wall them
off from their future. With that, I yield back.
Chairman Heinrich. Well we will start with questions and
alternate back and forth, and I want to start with you, Mr.
Eichhorst, and I want to make clear. I actually do not call
these ``green jobs.'' These are just jobs, and the thing I do
like about them is that they are the kind of jobs in our state
where you can really build a family around these skilled trades
jobs.
How important are these types of programs in preparing
young people for careers in the trades, the programs that start
before you get to the graduation in your high school? Because I
think what--one of the things that we hear that changed over
the course of the last 30 to 40 years is this idea that if you
do not get a four year degree, just forget about it.
And now we are in this position where we really need
skilled trades, and the demand signals in New Mexico, I mean
some of this has been mentioned, but 1,800 factory workers
coming at Maxeon Solar, 250 to 300 at Arcosa Wind Towers.
You have got thousands of people necessary to build the
kind of scale of projects like what Pattern and SunZia are
doing. A thousand more skilled trades people just building the
fab at Intel right now, and you know, every job we do not fill
is going to be filled by somebody coming from out of state and
we want to build long-term capacity.
So how important is it for us to be working with the high
schools, to get this stuff, the career technical education back
in the high schools, to create an on ramp for apprenticeships?
Mr. Eichhorst. Thank you for that, Chairman Heinrich. I
appreciate the question. When I went through high school in the
90's, we did have shop classes. We had welding classes, we had
automotive. I would not have finished high school if it would
not have been for welding classes. I was bored to death sitting
through some of those classes, and because I had the ability to
go out and weld, go make pig feeders, go make different things,
I stuck it out.
And then I went to college just to prove everybody wrong,
and I was not going to, I think. But right now, a perfect
example, Los Alamos National Laboratories. They are going to
demand an additional 1,500 craft workers. That is just the men
and women that build the facilities by 2026.
Espanola Valley is a beautiful part of the state. It is one
of the most beautiful areas in America as far as I am
concerned. But they have issues with dropout rates, they have
had issues with drugs, they have had a lot of issues in the
past. What this does, when we get to go in and talk to these
students before they graduate high schools, we let them know
look, you need a high school diploma. You need to keep your
record clean. You need to do these specific things.
The minute you are done, we will bring you in. We will
start you down the right path. You are going to be making
money. You are going to have insurance like nobody else has.
You are going to have pension, real retirement plans that
nobody else has. All you have to do is keep your act together,
keep your nose clean, graduate high school. We will teach you
how to weld. We will teach you the electrical, and everything
that you need.
The heat pump technology. That is one of the hardest
things, to find individuals right now that want to do that. But
what we are finding is we are going out and we are hitting all
these little itty-bitty communities and these tribal entities.
Once they realize what heat pump technology is, they say oh my
gosh, this is awesome. This is like puzzles. This is exciting.
This is something we need to do.
So if we can get to them before they drop out or before
they choose a job, if we can get to them and explain look, you
will have a career that will change you entire family's
existence. You will be able to afford a home, you will be able
to do what you need to do with a spouse and children, and all
the exciting things that, you know, most of us wanted with the
American dream.
As we get to these high school students and we can do these
apprenticeship readiness programs, we get through the OSHA 10.
We get through the first ACPR. We get through the basics that
every high schooler should have.
I have had apprentices come in at 18, 19, 20 years old,
they have never swung a hammer. They have never used a shovel.
They were not lucky like I was to have a dad that forced us to
do manual labor and actually made us get outside and clean the
stalls and work on the pens and take care of the animals.
I was lucky. But a lot of these kids never had that
opportunity. So if we get to them young enough and we explain
look, you like working with your hands, you like working on a
computer, a lot of our jobs are very technologically advanced.
So we get to them younger, they have a career path, they
think oh my gosh, I have something to stay in school for. I
have something to look forward to. Maybe I should not go try
some drugs. Maybe I should not do something stupid. Maybe I
should stick with this.
We get them in these programs and our instructors came from
the same place. Maybe they had colorful pasts. Maybe they had a
crazy childhood, and they can explain to these young men and
women look, you have a heck of an opportunity for a long-term
career. So thank you for that question. It is a good
opportunity to get these students in as early as possible, and
get in front of them and let them know that they have a lot of
opportunities.
Chairman Heinrich. Vice Chairman Schweikert.
Vice Chairman Schweikert. Is it inappropriate to invite him
to come hang out with my--if you ever make it to Scottsdale and
Phoenix, I have a full welding setup. I was not allowed to
marry my wife until I learned how to weld, because like five of
her brothers are all master welders.
Chairman Heinrich. For the record, Mr. Eichhorst knows
this, but I actually did a DIY on a heat pump over the August
break.
Vice Chairman Schweikert. Really?
Chairman Heinrich. Just for the fun of it.
Vice Chairman Schweikert. Oh God, now I need to put my
plumbing so you and I can maybe start a video competition. As
long as we are not both on a desert island, right. Okay, that
is sort of an internal joke.
But now to a point of seriousness, and this is actually--I
need my two Ph.Ds to actually bounce on something. First off
Dr. Beach, what is my population? Well, sometimes I do not
think we start at some of the base discussion. What is my
available labor pool right now that actually exists, that has
not gone off and done, you know, four year university degrees
or, you know, has chosen military this and that?
What is my actual population that is available to become a
skilled craftsman, a skilled journeyman?
Dr. Beach. Sure. Every, every year we get about two million
people who enter the labor force.
Vice Chairman Schweikert. Okay.
Dr. Beach. Some of those are from foreign countries and
some of those are native born. We have got about five and a
half million people who have dropped out of the labor force,
but tell us each month that they would like a job if a job was
available to them. When we ask them why you do not find that
job and they say well, it is either training or I have been out
too long or my skills are.
So I would say the available labor force at a minimum is
between seven and ten million people.
Vice Chairman Schweikert. Really? Okay. I did not have you
as high as ten, but we have been reflecting the seven, and
looking at. So because one of the misalignments is, you know,
seven, but and then we will hear things saying but there is 20
million jobs.
Dr. Beach. Right.
Vice Chairman Schweikert. Tell me, from your expertise,
what is my misalignment right now, of just raw population, you
know, skilled--but who is not in that labor participation and
available labor opportunities?
Dr. Beach. Well first, the biggest one is space. A job may
be in New York but the person who is looking for a job might be
in California, and so they cannot travel to the job. So that is
a big one.
Vice Chairman Schweikert. And Dr. Holtz-Eakin, one of the
things that is coming back to us, particularly on this type of
labor skills, is particularly, you know, you have great wind
assets as New Mexico has one. You build, but then it is over
and now you are back into a migration requirement.
It is, it is sort of the urban/suburban issue compared to
where so much of green, let us call them green jobs for right
now, for lack of a better definition, are often in rural, you
know, more difficult areas. The reality of not only having a
skilled population, but just the convenience of having a family
and those things in those types of locations. What is my
misalignment? What am I not understanding?
Dr. Holtz-Eakin. Oh, I think you are understanding the
geography perfectly, and you have to develop the economics to
make it in the firm's interest to locate there, the firm's
interest to hire workers who are willing to work there, and you
know, money is a powerful solution to a lot of problems. This
will be how this gets solved.
We have had state to state labor migration for a long time
in the United States. That I am not worried about. The more
difficult part will be the public services, the police, fire,
schools in places that did not have those populations before,
getting those up to scale quickly as they are building these
projects.
Vice Chairman Schweikert. But then you have the second
half. Then those populations disappear. It sort of like the dam
economics of there is some great stories like, you know, for
my-like doesn't like need populations, and then they crash.
Dr. Holtz-Eakin. Yeah. It is the recurrent criss-cross.
They are just doing it in different spots. I am not worried
about getting people from place to place, but the fixed costs
you are going to incur those places are real.
Vice Chairman Schweikert. If you were to approach this
whole subject, what is my most elegant way of building a well-
skilled population that is available for at least this and
future technology? What would you do?
Dr. Holtz-Eakin. So number one, it is not about the money.
First of all, there is not any money. I will just stipulate
that, and then you know, we have spent about $200 billion since
2001 on graduate medical education, and they are not nearly
enough doctors, nurses, physicians assistants. It is not about
just money.
The second thing I would say, the lesson is do not try to
bring something to scale. President Hartzler is doing a great
job. Do not replicate that all across the country, because it
is a great job in that location, for that demand for labor,
with those firms, and we repeat this error all the time.
Decentralize this as much as possible. Do it at the local level
through the private-public partnerships and/or private firms.
That is going to be the most successful way to do it, and
certainly do not try to create green jobs. Create jobs that
could be green or blue or yellow. Give people skills that are
transferable from sector to sector, because we do not know what
this will look like in five years.
Vice Chairman Schweikert. Dr. Holtz-Eakin, thank you. You
got to my punchline without me having to say it. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Heinrich. Senator Klobuchar.
Senator Klobuchar. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank
you for holding this very, very important hearing. It could not
be more timely, with everything happening. I guess I will start
with you, Mr. Eichhorst. Talk about policies, aside from the
apprenticeship requirements with recently enacted tax credits,
what else we can do to ensure apprenticeship programs can grow?
I am, you know, I am one on the presidential debate stage
that kept saying we are not going to have a shortage of sports
marketing degrees. We are going to have a shortage of
electricians and plumbers, and of course nurses and doctors and
I pissed off everyone that had a kid with a sports marketing
degree. But it really worked well for me. But if you could, if
you could answer the question.
Mr. Eichhorst. Absolutely, thank you for that. I will
answer to the best of my ability. Allowing--so allowing
policies to require registered apprenticeship programs, that is
one of the things you just talked about. That has been
fantastic, and that helps increase the amount of apprentices
needed, right?
But making it on a local level helps a ton too. If you go
to an area that has predominantly not done anything that could
be considered green or energy type, they may not need very many
apprentices. So if you go to the areas that need them, you can
train there. You can train for what they need, and those skills
can be transferred anywhere in the country, and I will give you
an example.
What is nice about the unions that I am used to is so the
UA. We are across the entire United States, from Seattle to
Florida. If you are training for a med gas certification to
build hospitals, and I know this is not clean energy, but this
is an easy example, you are doing the exact same training in
California as you are in New York. You are doing the same
training in Seattle as you are in Florida.
So if we are working on a very specific type of alloy or
type of welding that we are doing in New Mexico, we built a
uranium enrichment plant years ago. They had very specific
alloys on there. They had aluminums and they had some different
things we were not used to. We developed a training program in
Albuquerque. We were extremely successful with it. We did a
great job.
We had apprentices welding on this facility because they
went through the UA's, our welding standards are extremely
stringent. They went through the UA's weld program. They were
certified. Those same students went up to Malta, New York to
weld on Global Foundries. Some of them are in Phoenix right now
welding on Intel.
Some of them have gone up to Seattle. Some of them have
gone all over. So as this continues to happen, we will continue
to keep up with it. So in Albuquerque, one thing we are doing
is making sure we have a brand new state of the art welding
training center, to keep up with what is coming, and what is
nice, they have the ability to travel the country.
Senator Klobuchar. Yeah.
Mr. Eichhorst. So these young men and women----
Senator Klobuchar. Making sure that they are able to use
those skills other places. Okay, quick Ms. Hartzler. So I have
worked a lot in this area. Senator Moran and I have a bill on
increasing the partnerships between colleges and apprenticeship
programs, and Senator Braun and I have one on expanding this
certain tax advantage savings accounts to be used for skills
training, apprenticeships, as well as some degrees in these
areas. Talk about what you think we could be doing better.
Ms. Hartzler. I think the policies you are discussing are
exactly what I would say any learner who is coming to your
college would want to see enacted. There is no question. I
would say building on the prior testimony that pre-
apprenticeships are so critical.
We do that with our public school districts through dual
credit classes. We work with 135 high schools. What is
important about those high schools is that we are training them
and we are exposing them, many of the students, to certainly
working opportunities while they are in high school and
certainly when they come to college, because they are taking
these dual credit classes.
We are also helping them earn at the same time. So when you
talk about savings, how important that is, not only--and I just
want to say not only for these initial training expenses and
experiences. We know that this is lifelong training. This is
not a one and done. It is not one in five years and done.
So we know that a third of our learners at the college
already have degrees. They may be marketing degree, but they
are often nursing degrees and seeking advanced certifications.
So I can tell that a savings account that allow individuals to
continue to earn would be very beneficial, and save for future
training where there might not be other financial aid
allowances for.
Senator Klobuchar. Okay, thank you. Both my dad got a two-
year community college degree as did my sister, and she got her
GED first. So our family would not be around if it was not for
a two-year degree. So thank you. Last, Dr. Holtz-Eakin, you
touched on it a bit, but the importance of immigration reform
right now.
I know our nation has expanded as far as I know with the
shrinking workforce, and I do not think we want to be the first
to experiment when you look at the numbers. And so just whether
it is work permits, visas, dreamers, I am not going to go
through the list, but how important that is right now, because
in the rural parts of our country, nursing homes, hospitals,
doctor's offices, that bill, you know, to allow the doctors to
stay when they come from other countries and get their degrees
here. I think we have 12 Republicans on it. Talk about that
quick.
Dr. Holtz-Eakin. I could talk about that for two hours, but
a 30 second version is that there is no more important economic
policy than immigration reform, period. The native born
population has some replacement with fertility. Our future will
be dictated by our immigration decisions. The pace at which the
labor force grows, the skills that are embedded in it,
everything is about immigration.
The current system is broken, and a comprehensive reform
would be great. But if you cannot get that, anything that will
provide greater flexibility in the use of skills in the U.S.,
whether it is spouses, the H1B recipients work, things like
that.
Senator Klobuchar. Yes, I would have to wait five years,
because if they are all going to Canada because they cannot
work----
Dr. Holtz-Eakin. The list goes on and on. So I would
encourage you to pursue this in any form you can.
Senator Klobuchar. Thank you.
Chairman Heinrich. Senator Schmitt.
Senator Schmitt. Thank you Mr. Chairman, and thank you all
for being here. I guess what I wanted to do in the limited time
that I have is just you guys are all dealing with--well
especially this side, are sort of you guys are looking at the
numbers.
But you guys are kind of dealing with a lot of downstream
effects that are certainly beyond your control, but certainly
some decisions that have been made. This is my first Congress,
my first term in the Senate, but certainly a lot of decisions
that have been made have had an impact.
I think it is important for us to acknowledge I think some
of the fearmongering that happens, that drives a lot of the
dollars that flow out of this place. In March of this year, the
U.N. warned of humanity's ticking time bomb, and released a
Report of Reports on the dire status of global climate,
describing a multi-million dollar plan to implement climate
change policies across the globe.
The Secretary General called the report a survival guide
for humanity. To him, the era of global warming has ended. The
era of global boiling has arrived. These sort of comments to me
are totally nuts. They are not new. In the 70's, we were
hearing about, you know, global cooling and that there would be
food rationing by 1980. The U.N. issued a report in the 1990's
essentially saying that environmental catastrophe is
irreversible as a nuclear holocaust would take effect by the
year 2000.
So it is easy for these folks, in my view, to have lost
complete credibility with a lot of these predictions. The issue
though is a lot of people bought into this, and the United
States has spent five trillion with a T, trillion dollars that
now has downstream impacts that some of you are dealing with,
whether it is retraining or apprenticeships.
I do want to ask the question, and I do not know who the
best person to ask. So Doctor, I'm going to--Holtz-Eakin, I am
going to pick on you or ask you this question, and I do--we
have spent this amount of money and I think the number is in
order to effect temperatures by a third of a degree Fahrenheit,
the amount of money that the United States would have to spend
to do this, even if you accepted that premise, is nuts.
There is a tradeoff. There is opportunity costs, right? We
are talking about money for training programs, and here we are
now driving investment in other places, including China where a
lot of these rare earth materials are mined. Those are--we have
hollowed out the middle class for a lot of these industrial
jobs that have gone other places.
But as it relates specifically to whether it is, you know,
for wind energy or solar, if you accepted the idea that we are
controlling the weather, if China and India are not on board
with this, which they are not, I mean they are building coal-
fired plants, you know, three a month, what are we doing?
Is this a tradeoff? Is this money in your expert opinion
here of how we are spending money, are we--is there a return
here other than a loss of jobs that we have to retrain people
for?
Dr. Holtz-Eakin. So I am a long-time participant in the
debate over climate change and have done this at the CBO in the
McCain campaign, and more recently, and I believe the current
strategy is not going to be effective. The idea that you can
simply subsidize everything and get the U.S. to a clean energy
portfolio I think is mistaken.
I am not going to belabor it, but I think that this is not
going to work. And the lack of international buy-in means that
it will be futile in the end from a greenhouse gas
concentration point of view. So it is hard to make the case
this is a high rate of return investment of federal dollars. It
really is.
Senator Schmitt. Well in----
Dr. Holtz-Eakin. It is terribly inefficient the way it is
designed.
Senator Schmitt. There is a study from the University of
Pennsylvania that found that fewer than one percent of all
workers can transition to a green job, and I think that--and
you do not--Mr. Eichhorst, you do not have to comment on this
if you do not want to. This is probably more of a statement.
I think what we are seeing play out right now in the auto
industry is sort of the tip of the iceberg. Ford Motor Company
lost $4.5 billion on their EV vehicle. I have a Wentzville
plant. I have in Wentzville in Missouri, there is a GM plant.
$4.5 billion would go a long way, I think, and having the
parties come together, and my big concern here is that this
obsession with this agenda is going to continue to bleed jobs
and we are going to keep having to have conversations about
what sort of retraining makes the most sense, whereas if we
were making better decisions here, we would not need to have
this hearing. So thank you for being here.
Chairman Heinrich. Mr. Eichhorst, if you want to comment.
Senator Schmitt. Yeah, feel free. I just did not--I know
that is not why you are here to testify, but is certainly
something near and dear, I know, as a union guy.
Dr. Holtz-Eakin. Can I add one thing?
Senator Schmitt. Sure.
Chairman Heinrich. Absolutely.
Dr. Holtz-Eakin. In terms of downstream consequences, I
think the one that should not be forgotten in this setting is a
lot of these efforts are making up for failures of the K to 12
education system, and the most important thing we could do
would be to take on and improve that system.
I mean the evidence is overwhelming that it had failed for
ten straight years, and it got wore in the pandemic. And so
having to train someone in a two or four year setting because
they did not learn anything in school is a real problem.
Chairman Heinrich. Mr. Eichhorst, I am going to ask you to
answer his question. Are you seeing jobs go away in New Mexico
because of these policies, or are you seeing demand for jobs?
Mr. Eichhorst. Thank you. I will answer to the best of my
ability. We are seeing a higher demand for jobs because of
this. One of the nice things is everything that we build,
whether it is green technology or coal-burner, requires
maintenance. So we have maintenance folks on every facility,
whether it is solar, wind, coal, natural gas.
All those plants we have outages. All those facilities we
have maintenance individuals. So because of the transition, I
am seeing a spike in the need for more training. It is not
necessarily green jobs. It is jobs, it is careers. If we do
this right, these folks can transition from a natural gas power
plant to a solar facility.
I mean there is a lot of transition that can happen over
the next 20 years. Hopefully, I will not be in the labor pool
in 20 years from now, but I see the transition there. A lot of
these folks have developed through the years, and when I first
started in the welding industry, it was nothing compared to
like it is now.
So in 20-something years, we have learned new technology.
We have changed it up, and I see within the next 20 years it
will be totally different again. So it is a good opportunity to
learn now.
Chairman Heinrich. Thank you, Mr. Eichhorst. Representative
Moore.
Representative Moore. Thank you so much Mr. Chairman, and
let me just thank all of the witnesses for participating in
this very, very important topic.
I was able to peruse some of the testimony that I may have
missed, given my late departure (sic). But from what I can
gather, Mr. Holtz-Eakin and welcome back to the Joint Economic
Committee; you are no, you are not a stranger here.
You and Dr. Beach are basically saying that a young person
who graduates high school and maybe somehow gravitates into a
private business, is no better off or worse off than someone
who has gone through say, you know, the community college with
Ms. Hartzler and learned some skills or picked up a
certificate, or gone through some of the community-based
programming.
I just want to be clear. You say all the data and studies
have really shown, and I was really disturbed to hear that, you
know, maybe some--that intensive services that you give people
are great for society, positive benefit to society as a whole,
but that training had a negative benefit.
And so that, and then the notion that the private sector is
so much better prepared to train people for jobs that are
wanted at that time. I am sort of confused as to how people
find out about the Gwen Moore Company that wants to, you know,
repair solar panels. I am trying to understand where the lack
of value is in any kind of training program. But you did say
teach them in high school, so I will--I will give you that.
Dr. Holtz-Eakin. I would agree that that is a fair
characterization of my testimony, except for one thing. I think
the community colleges stand out as the successful actors in
this field.
I mean they really have been good at identifying the
opportunities in the area, the skills needed for those
employers, taking individuals who may have finished high school
or may not have, may have left another job and getting them
into the labor force successfully and getting them employed.
That is the success story.
The failure is the, especially the Workforce Innovation and
Opportunity Act, the one-stop shops and where people just walk
in and say I need to get a job, I cannot get a job, help me. We
do not help them, and you should be upset. I mean that is not a
good thing.
Representative Moore. I am not getting upset. What about--
we at the National Association of Building Trades unions and
stuff like what Mr. Eichhorst is doing, how would you
characterize? They are spending like--did you say $280 million
or something a year for training? Is that a waste of money?
They are in the private sector.
Dr. Holtz-Eakin. Well no. Again, those are the ones that
work, and those should be applauded and supported, and we
should not expand the other ones.
Representative Moore. Okay. But so listen, my time is
waning. So let me ask. I am very curious because I do not know
who said it, but someone was in here talking about providing
these kinds of trainings to TANF recipients. Those are the
poorest of the poor. Is that an example of people who would be
better off served with, you know, you know, trying to improve
their self-esteem?
I have heard all kinds of training programs for people who
are on TANF. Help them with personal problems that they may
have like alcoholism and so forth, but that--but these training
programs which have these benefit cliffs and time limits, this
is wasted money. Is that an example?
Dr. Beach. That is not what the--that is not what the
literature shows, Congresswoman.
So we have kind of two levels of training programs, and the
research on these two levels indicates that what we call adult
education, and this would be for TANF and some of the other
lower income training programs that the government supports,
that the basic skills development, reading, writing,
arithmetic, all that sort of thing, is very good and it has a
lifetime effect.
The literature on the jobs training programs that--and what
we are talking about is scientific studies where they do
randomized control tests, indicates that the value of those
government programs that are run by the government in
government agencies is not positive. Now that does not mean
that they do not do some people some good for a while. But over
their lifetime, there is not that much of an improvement.
However, studies also indicate that the real bang for the
buck comes when you partner with businesses, you partner with
labor unions that know what the jobs are--what jobs are needed
because consumers are giving them signals, and then we partner
with the educational establishment to deploy that training in a
cost-effective way.
That is effective. So if you want an effective program,
rely on the private sector, rely on that partnership. Get away
from programs that are directly run by the government, because
I think all the evidence seems to be pretty much coming in with
well, it is just not proved out to be as good a thing as we
thought it would be. Well-intentioned, but just not--we just
not quite deliver.
Representative Moore. My time is expired, but I will extend
to myself some personal privileges here, to be able to say that
the only kinds of programs I can think of that are really run
just exclusively by government are these programs for poor
people like TANF, where they have you, you know, raking up the
leaves in Central Park and then dump them back on the ground,
so the next welfare workers can learn how to have dignity and
scrape them up again. So Mr. Chairman, thank you for your
indulgence and I yield back.
Chairman Heinrich. Representative Beyer.
Representative Beyer. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much,
and Mr. Ranking Member. I appreciate this, and a really
important topic and I am fascinated by it. Let me quote our
President right now, who said that--said many times that the
middle class built America, and unions built the middle class.
What we have seen as union membership has gone down over
the last 50 years, the income gap has grown ever larger between
the average American and the top, and our middle classes have
gotten smaller and smaller, and you hear virtually every
article talks about how many people fulfilled the American
dream, is it reachable anymore.
So Mr. Eichhorst, how do we stimulate these new green jobs
that are going to happen one way or the other, to be union
jobs?
Mr. Eichhorst. Thank you Mr. Beyer for that. One way, and
this may be a little touchy for certain people, but one way
that grows union jobs well is project labor agreements, to have
some of these that include registered apprenticeship programs.
I have seen individual companies come from all over the United
States, and they will set up shop and they will say we have got
an apprenticeship program.
There is no program set in place. There is not standards
set in place. There is no way that these students are
advancing, but they call it a registered program. The
registered apprenticeship programs that are approved by the
government, that are actually looked at and are audited quite
often, they do require certain steps.
You have to pass certain, either it is an ability test or a
written test. There is always methods to this. Once you can
pass these, you continue to move on. Having those in place
helps a ton. That really does require more apprentices. We can
have a million jobs out there, but if these jobs do not have a
way to require apprentices, how are we going to train these
individuals to fill these jobs.
Our workforce right now in the state of New Mexico and my
local union, the average plumber or pipefitter is 50 years old.
Who in the heck should still be working hard in the field at 50
years old. We have got start training our replacements. That is
one of my biggest issues. When we require the registered
apprenticeship programs with these legislations or with these
bills, that helps train our--shoot, I would say the next 20,
30, 40 years of workforce.
That will allow us to get into some of these government
agencies and say look, you are doing a great job training these
kids that might have dropped out from school or these men and
women that may not have a job that supports their family well.
We jump in there. We help them out. We get them to the basics.
Once they get through the basics, if they choose to get in
an apprenticeship program, that is great. The demand will be
there. They will need more apprentices. So the more legislation
we can include with registered apprenticeship programs, and
that is a nice thing. It is both sides.
Registered apprenticeship programs are all across the
country. Most of them are great. They follow very stringent
standards and they work. That is what is going to grow our new
workforce in the next 20, 30, 40 years.
Representative Beyer. So let me follow up. There was a lot
of big news last week about Climeworks building three big
direct air capture plants in the United States. This is a
direct result of the 45(q) tax credit that showed up in the
Inflation Reduction Act.
How do you as a union leader, how did the unions react to
the federal investment in new technologies, in terms of what
you see the jobs are that are coming?
Mr. Eichhorst. So we, we like any jobs. We love to build,
whether it is green technology, whether it is old technology.
If we are taking an old coal burner down or if we are
remodeling an old coal burner plant in the United States, that
is still work for us. We love work.
The building trades and especially the UA, we love all
construction, and as it turns more green or more
environmentally friendly, we are keeping up with those
technologies. We love, we love work. We love more and more. The
more that happens around the country, the more plants that are
built, the happier we are and the more men and women we can put
to work.
Representative Beyer. Thank you, and I pivot to Dr. Holtz-
Eakin, who is no stranger here. Doctor, you wrote, you know,
that the majority of the occupations listed are not specific to
the solar power industry, and that--and certainly my own
experience in the retail automobile business is that most of
our technicians come with, maybe they had some training in the
military.
Occasionally, they had tech school. But mostly the
manufacturers put them through years and years of training. You
know, every quarter somebody's gone for a week, learning how to
do automatic transmissions or whatever. What implication does
this have as we struggle with meaningful trade assistance,
trade adjustment assistance?
We know that trade agreements and technology have displaced
so many workers. We do not seem to have gotten a handle on what
to do with all those displaced workers.
Dr. Holtz-Eakin. I would concur with the finding, that we
really have not had a successful trade adjustment assistance
program in the United States, in part because it is centered on
the establishment, and the establishment being, raising its
hand and saying we are suffering from trade competition. These
workers are going to lose their jobs because of it. They are
not eligible for TAA.
That is not looking at the person. That is looking at the
current occupation and the current establishment. And in fact,
the federal training programs do their worst when they are
trying to figure out the specific skills for the future that
people need. So this is--has been backward-looking and largely
unsuccessful.
Representative Beyer. Thank you very much.
Chairman Heinrich. The Senator from Vermont. Welcome.
Senator Welch. It is good to be here. You know, the
frustration I have is that we all know we need training
programs, right, and most of us up here do not have a clue
about how actually to implement it. You all have real world
experience or the benefit of years of studying, and I would
like us to have some way where the folks who have to do it and
have some skin in the game, which is employers and ambitious
young people who want to get trained, can get into a program
that is meaningful.
It seems to me that it does take--a design has to include
like labor, because there is a real interest labor has in
having young people get into the trades. It clearly can involve
community college, because that is where our young people who
cannot--who have aspirations, but oftentimes lower incomes, go
to try to take that next step.
It obviously has to include the employers, because if
employers--employers do not want to waste their time. They
really need workers. So I just want to ask you if there is some
way where we could accomplish the training that is absolutely
essential, and do it in a way better than we can prescriptively
from here.
And I will go with you, Dr. Beach. By the way, you are in
the Coolidge Foundation?
Dr. Beach. I am indeed sir.
Senator Welch. So you have been to metropolitan Plymouth,
Vermont?
Dr. Beach. Indeed. I have visited Plymouth Notch with you.
Senator Welch. Population 400, Calvin Coolidge. But it is
great to see you. But go ahead. I will let you start with your
Vermont credibility.
Dr. Beach. Well I just wanted to do--yeah, okay. Thank you
very much for my association now with Vermont. I expect
citizenship soon. So there are a couple of things that I think
we ought to do. First off, I sponsored a study through the
state of Minnesota when I was commissioner, to find out whether
state data, which is often richer than federal data, it is
surprising, could be used to study people as they go into
employment and out of employment and into new jobs, their life
cycle.
So we need to build a way to look at a person's whole life
of employment. I think that is really--and it is called a
longitudinal study. It is not terribly difficult to do, but you
have to do it with driver's license records, and we do not have
access to that.
And then secondly, the oldest piece of job training
legislation still have one program left in it, and it is called
the Wagner-Peyser Act. The employment service provision could
be more exploited than it is, which is to give information to
workers about what is happening in the private sector.
Senator Welch. That could happen like at community
colleges, right? I mean I know students are really interested
in getting that. But what about this partnership idea, because
I--as I mentioned, I just do not see how this happens with--out
of partnership. Do you want to start, President Hartzler?
Ms. Hartzler. Sure, if I may. Thank you Mr. Chairman and
Representative. So I do not think there is any question that
the work that the federal government and the states do that
require, and frankly are industry standards, where there are
licensed professionals, require all of us, whether it is the
trainer, the employer and other partners, which could be state
government, could be our unions and certainly our K-12
partners, come together to identify what are the job needs not
only today but in the future, because our employers are telling
us what they need.
We use BLS data, but frankly that is historic. It is not
predicting or telling us where we are going. So you have to
have employers, and frankly employers come to us to do the
training. So there is always a partnership with employers.
Our employers and industry groups tell us the skills and
the competencies are that our learners need at any point in
their career. That helps us all come together to apply for
grants and to determine how best to use our resources, which
could include sharing facilities.
So we--there is a great deal of oversight from our----
Senator Welch. How we make it work better? We have got to
get more folks training, I mean including in the trades. You
know, there is some money in the Inflation Reduction Act to
train on energy efficiency. That was something quite important
to a lot of us, especially to me. But you know, if you want to,
what they are saying these days, if you want a plumber, you
have got to marry one, right? So there is an issue here about
getting people who could have a really good well-paying career,
that gave them the option of staying where they live. Mr.
Eichhorst.
Mr. Eichhorst. Okay. That is probably the thing I focus on
the most often. In the state of New Mexico, you know, we are
rural and we have got two million people in a great big state.
The one thing we have done well is we will partner up with
Navajo Tech. They have got two sites on the Navajo Nation.
We get in there, we work with these young people. We bring
them in. The UA and Navajo Tech started a plumbing program
there, because a lot of these young men and women have no idea
what they are going to do once they graduate high school or a
community college.
This gives these young people the opportunity. They say you
know, I do not want to leave home yet. I am helping mom, I am
helping grandma, you know. Once I get a real job I can help
them a little further, and if there is some governmental
assistance to get them through this program, they go through
the community colleges. They come out with a certificate or a
degree, which is phenomenal. They get the basic training.
They come to us with direct entry and advanced placement.
So instead of starting out as a first year apprentice that does
not need to know anything, they come in as a second year
apprentice because they have got their basics. They have got
their CPR. They have got a bunch of the things needed.
So that model works really well. If at 18 years old, I had
no idea what I was going to do with my life. I am 47. I still
do not know what I am going to do with my life. I still do not
know what I am going to do when I grow up. But at 18, if some
of these young individuals, they do not have to be young,
anybody, can go to a community college and say maybe I am
interested in electrical. Maybe I am interested in welding.
Maybe I am interested in plumbing.
They go in the weld shop and they burn the heck of
themselves, they are done. They want to become an electrician
or a plumber. So this gives them an opportunity to not go into
a program and fail. This allows them to think okay, I do not
mind getting wet, but I do not like being shocked or burnt.
So I am going to be a plumber. So this gives some of these
people a great opportunity to think I had the opportunity to go
to CNM. Now I want to be a plumber, and then they get direct
entry into several apprenticeship programs. Thank you.
Chairman Heinrich. We are going to try to do a real quick
lightening round of second, just because this has been such a
great discussion. Dr. Hartzler, Workforce Pell. How would it
change things if, if you could--if that were in place tomorrow?
Ms. Hartzler. It would give immediate federal aid to
individuals seeking training in high-demand industries that
require industry-certified credentials. The Federal aid would
allow individuals to access trainings that can be completed in
eight to twelve weeks and immediately access a good job. They
will be able to begin a career pathway and continue to upskill
as they progress in their career.
Chairman Heinrich. Right. One of the things that struck me
today is there is a lot of agreement about what works. So raise
your hand if you agree with this characterization. One of the
places where we should be trying to open the aperture for more
training is the partnerships between community colleges and
employers.
(Show of hands.)
Chairman Heinrich. One of the places we could open that
aperture is the partnerships between the skilled trades and
employers?
(Show of hands.)
Chairman Heinrich. We should be doing more apprenticeship-
based or work-based learning.
(Show of hands.)
Chairman Heinrich. This is, this is super-helpful. I am
going to turn things over to the Vice Chairman, but thank you
all for your time today. I will have a closing statement. But I
think you guys have all been very helpful in this discussion.
Vice Chairman Schweikert. And you took all the fun out of
it. You basically asked--see, there is slightly a non sequitur,
but there is a reason for this. Dr. Holtz-Eakin, if you happen
to come across someone who knew their way around the BLS and
you could ask them here is my dream. I really need this data
set for them to do, what would you ask them to produce?
Dr. Holtz-Eakin. Oh, I think we--he already answered the
question, and he is the guy who knows his way around the BLS.
So----
Vice Chairman Schweikert. Oh really. Oh, that makes it so
much easier.
Dr. Holtz-Eakin. We in all aspects of documenting the labor
force, rely on too many one year snapshots and not enough
studies of the dynamics of individuals through their careers.
And there are some academic studies that do this, but if we
on a more regular basis documented education, entry/exit, job,
entry/exit, wage growth, wage growth when changing jobs, wage
growth when staying in jobs, we would understand so much better
what is already out there in the way of incentives to do things
and what the gaps really are. That is what is missing.
Vice Chairman Schweikert. So Doctor, in regards to those
gaps----
Dr. Beach. Right, so but I also----
Vice Chairman Schweikert. What could--we have a bunch of
freaky smart economists on Joint Economic.
Dr. Beach. You do.
Vice Chairman Schweikert. What can we also research? What I
mean, what do we do to understand what is really going on? You
know, and part of my is self-serving. I have a fascination
right now with demographics, and you know, how many million
young or prime age males seem to be missing.
Dr. Beach. Sure.
Vice Chairman Schweikert. What am I--what should I ask for?
Dr. Beach. We need to do a better job at the state and sub-
state level looking at the demand that employers have for
specific occupations. That is an area which is a very practical
growth area. It is not intellectually hard to do. It is just
bureaucratically hard to do. So that is the first thing.
Secondly, when I was Commissioner, I supported 52 Labor
Market Information systems around the country. They are state
level organizations that collect data, and then propagate that
data through the UI system and through state organizations.
They are dying for a little larger mission statement, and
many of them I supported through grants to do that larger work,
to actually look at how they could expand our knowledge of the
demand for labor, the supply for labor, the training
requirements, the apprenticeship opportunities.
So I think better supporting the Labor Market Information
system, which has existed since the Wagner Act in one form or
another, is an area of extremely low cost but high return for
all of our labor questions.
Vice Chairman Schweikert. We have had sort of a radical
side discussion of how much of some of this base level data
could be almost crowd sourced. Not collected in the
traditional----
Dr. Beach. A lot.
Vice Chairman Schweikert [continuing]. Survey method, and
therefore it would also change the cost of collection models.
But the fact of the matter is how much of our lives are on
this, and this could be one of our most powerful understanding
of in and out labor, where they are geographically, the types
of projects they are on.
So, and this is not Democrat or Republican. It is just we
often lack a lot of the tools to be intellectually credible on
the things we absolutely know are true, except we have no facts
to often back them up. And that is as close as I am going to
come to giving a closing statement, is I love this Committee. I
want us to do good things, and then you and I will fight
through the partisan divide later.
But right now, our battle is knowing what the actual Facts
are, you know? What is my actual labor shortage, what is my
actual shortage of available labor, you know, and then we will
do skills sets. But we have to deal with what Dr. Holtz-Eakin
said. One of our models is by the end of this decade, we just
have a shortage of people, and that is going to make some of
this discussion even seem more absurd.
Go back to the 1990's until today, what we have seen in our
fertility rates. I am in one of the highest growth areas in
America, Phoenix-Scottsdale, and I am seeing my school
districts start to shrink. The reality is here. Now we have got
to figure out how to deal with it, and with that I yield to
you.
Chairman Heinrich. One of the great things about this
Committee is the Vice Chairman and I agree that data is a good
thing. Representative Moore for the lightning round.
Representative Moore. Lightning round. Let me pick up where
Representative Schweikert left off, you know, to say that there
is shrinking population. That is in Arizona. There is a very
fast-growing population of Hispanics in this country. There are
African-Americans, there are people, there are labor shortages
not because we do not have people, but because people do not
have these skills. Am I wrong about that? There are people, but
they need the skill set. What role does government have in
helping get people through the pipeline?
Dr. Holtz-Eakin has already said, you know, that they need
to--I still have the little clock my boy made in shop. It is
kind of raggedy right now, but I still have it. We need to
invest more in the K through 12 public education system,
because people graduate from high school. They do not--you
know, even though you say there is no such thing as a green
job, you know, they might think it is really cool to work on
solar if they knew about it. So what role does government have?
Dr. Beach. Let me just back into the immigration question
again, because it is such a central part of what you have
asked. I will give you a fact. We think it is a fact. Last
year, that would be 2022, the labor force grew by around two
million, just around there.
900,000 because of natural people born in the United
States, 1.1 million because of people coming from other
countries to the United States. The U.N. projects that the
United States, if it has a reasonable immigration policy in
place, we will be one of the fastest-growing countries in the
world by 2100. Both China and India are actually shrinking. The
United States is supposed to grow, but almost all of that
growth is from immigration.
So if that is the case, then the educational system has to
radically change, radically change, and we cannot do, you know,
the old way of teaching, where we have a curriculum which is
focused on a culture which is not going to be dominant in this
country.
So I think the challenges here from job training are really
much bigger than even this Committee has discussed today, and
it is not going to be a government program. It is going to be
all local and it is going to be all through colleges and
community colleges and our educational system.
Representative Moore. Well, but that is government too.
They have got to be funded some kind of way.
Dr. Beach. Well, I think they do have to be funded in some
fashion, but you have got to be careful not to direct those
programs, because we are a big country with lots of pockets of
cultures, that are very different from one another, and but
from the standpoint of population, I want to persuade this
Committee not to think about the population shrinking.
That is not our problem. That is India's problem, that is
China's problem. Our population is going to be--our problem is
it is going to be growing like Kenya's. We are going to be
among the fastest-growing population in the world by 2100. So
yeah, we have got some really interesting challenges ahead of
us on that front.
Representative Moore. Thank you all so much. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Heinrich. Senator Welch.
Senator Welch. Well, I was impressed with the three things
everybody agreed on. So what are the problems--I did not get a
chance to ask you, Dr. Holtz-Eakin. What are the problems with
the existing job training programs? You probably went through
this, but just very quickly.
Dr. Holtz-Eakin. So I think the--my written testimony has
reference to a 2019 study that I did with a colleague, and what
really stands out is the mismatch between the skills that are
being delivered in those training programs and the things that
are needed by employers. We are training for jobs that do not
exist anymore, and we are not training for the jobs where,
where we see the growth.
And you can be the best teacher in the world. If you are
teaching them something that the employer does not want, it is
not going to work.
Senator Welch. So does that argue for something like what
Dr. Beach is talking about, with decentralized and local
administration?
Dr. Holtz-Eakin. It argues to be on that side of the table,
where they are paying attention to what the employers need,
seriously.
Senator Welch. Yeah. Well thank you.
Dr. Beach. No, that is the future Senator. It is to
discover a new way for the federal government to work through
partnerships to train the labor force of the future. We really
have to be aware also that the labor force is going to
radically change, you know, rapidly change because of AI. We
have not talked about that today, but there will just literally
be many occupations which are now kind of big, that will not be
big in the future.
But they will be new ones that we are not even conceiving.
Those will be discovered by the private sector before the
public sector even has an idea that they are emerging. So
building these partnerships, and I mean in a very constructive
and non-invasive way, is going to be the key role that the
federal government will play in the future.
Its profile in job training will shrink, while the profile
of the local organizations will grow, and that is exactly the
way it has to be.
Senator Welch. And you feel comfortable with that, at the
community college level, at the union level?
Ms. Hartzler. Yes.
Dr. Holtz-Eakin. If I could add just one thing? You asked
him sort of what should be in a program, and I just want to
emphasize something that was in Dr. Beach's testimony. Every
program should have built into it program evaluation. The key
is not starting things. The key is stopping things that are not
working, and the ones that I reviewed are still there and they
are still funded and they are not working. That money should be
going somewhere else.
Senator Welch. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you,
Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Heinrich. I want to say thanks to our witnesses.
This has been a great conversation. I think we got a lot out of
it. Thanks to our colleagues who came today. Questions for the
record may be submitted after the hearing. The record will
remain open for three business days from now, and this hearing
is now adjourned.
(Whereupon, at 3:44 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.)
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