Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen defends 'Bidenomics' during Mesa visit
Laura Gersony, Arizona Republic
5 min read
Janet Yellen, President Joe Biden’s Treasury secretary, made the case for her boss’s economic agenda, dubbed “Bidenomics,” and responded to criticism of the policy program as its key projects start to take shape on the ground in Arizona.
The Grand Canyon State is ground zero for some of the president's big economic priorities. Accelerated by Biden-signed laws, the state is on track to become a hub for semiconductor or “chips” manufacturing and has seen widespread investment in green technologies.
Now it needs to make those projects a reality and build the workforce to sustain them. That will require navigating a web of stakeholders in business, labor and politics.
Top issue: Training enough workers
The most immediate bottleneck that local leaders have identified, and the focus of Yellen’s visit, was the need to find workers to fill demand for new construction and manufacturing jobs.
Nationwide, the semiconductor industry projects that 115,000 additional jobs will be needed over the next seven years or so. Of those 67,000, or 58%, could remain unfilled, given current rates of training and college education.
In Arizona, the government and private companies have put money into workforce training programs accordingly.
Yellen visited Mesa Community College, which she said was implementing a prime example of the programs needed to “bridge this gap” between the existing workforce and what is needed.
“Here in Arizona and across the country, we need workers for the industries that will drive our country’s growth and resilience," Yellen said Saturday during a stop at a Maricopa County jobs center. "We know that Americans are ready to get to work and take advantage of these good jobs. They deserve the skills and training to do so."
Several community colleges are partnering with Phoenix for a “Quick Start” program geared toward rapidly training workers for the semiconductor industry.
Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chair Jack Sellers said it is unclear to him exactly how far the efforts would go to meet the new demand for workers in the Phoenix area, noting it was hard to predict the recent surge of private-sector investment. But he said “we really have some catching up to do” and “it’s a problem I like having."
Yellen weighs in on 'Bidenomics' critiques
President Joe Biden’s legislation has a suite of other goals aside from just getting projects off the ground.
Among other factors, the president wants those jobs to be well-paying, accessible to workers without a college degree, and preferably unionized. It’s part of the administration’s project to deliver for economically vulnerable Americans and, in doing so, win support for Biden in this year’s presidential election.
It's a massive policy undertaking that has earned him criticism from the left and right.
Gearing up to face Biden in the presidential race, former President Donald Trump’s campaign has circulated an op-ed arguing that the CHIPS Act’s focus on equity, using local labor, and other concerns were preventing it from getting off the ground.
Visiting Phoenix in April, Deputy Commerce Secretary Don Graves argued the Biden administration’s workforce goals and the core mission of its policies are “not at all” competing priorities.
“Unions have been the backbone of our country,” Graves said in an interview. “Finding ways to work with our unions, to build high-quality jobs, family-sustaining jobs across the country, is something that we as a country should be doing.”
Graves drew a contrast between Biden’s vision of a high-quality workforce and “our adversaries” who he charged are “dumping cheap goods that are manufactured by folks that don’t get the types of supports that they need,” an indirect jab at the use of forced labor among some Chinese companies.
“Union jobs are more likely to be good ones, with wages 10 to 15 percent higher on average and improved fringe benefits like predictable scheduling,” Yellen said Saturday in a speech in Mesa.
"We see these good jobs being created here in Arizona, which ranks among the top five states in terms of wages for semiconductor processing technicians."
Other analysts have pointed out that many of the Biden-spurred climate investments have flowed disproportionately toward red states. Some have speculated that those states' union unfriendly “right-to-work” laws partially explain that trend, which could undermine the administration's stated labor goals.
Asked about that trend, Yellen did not comment on the political leanings of states receiving federal money, but she pointed to analyses finding that investments in the industries Biden has targeted are disproportionately headed for “economically distressed areas” or places with below-average wages or college graduation rates.
“I think that's a good thing,” she said.
Yellen said the Biden-led laws had “very, very strong incentives to create good jobs, whether they're unionized or they're not.”
"Wherever they go in the country, these are going to be good, good jobs with good pay and ladders upward."
Those workforce issues have played out in Phoenix. In 2023, the American Prospect surfaced reports of safety issues at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s construction site in Phoenix. Since then, the company has negotiated a deal with workers that includes provisions on staffing and safety.
Taking questions from the media after her remarks, Yellen acknowledged that while Arizona is a beneficiary of the CHIPS Act, the Phoenix area’s new dependence on the semiconductor industry, which is notoriously prone to up-and-down cycles, could add risk to its economic system, too.
"It is a cyclical industry,” she said. “But long term, this is a very important industry that is going to be expanding and TSMC and Intel are absolutely top companies that are of great strategic importance.
“There may be some risks involved, but I think this is clearly a very good thing.”
