Labor Sec. Walsh: Labor Shortages Are a Bigger Stretch to Our Economy than Inflation or a Recession

EXCERPT:

WALSH: "Yeah. I’ll even add one more. Even some big businesses looking for engineers and businesses where there is no workers, You know, I think in this country, when you think about our economy, you think about our country, there is two sides to immigration: We don't want immigration or we'd like to see legal immigration. The problem is, in America, if we don’t have workers to fill these jobs, it is going to hurt our economy overall. And if you have 6 million jobs, let’s just play that number right now, assume that 6 million jobs that if everyone went to work in America tomorrow that was eligible, or not even eligible but they went to work, we have 6 million job openings. As you just said, it will hurt business in our country, it is going to hurt our economy and in some cases I think it is a bigger stretch to our economy that inflation is at this point, than a recession, because we need to fill these jobs. And then with all President Biden has done with the CHIPS Bill and the infrastructure bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, that is about creating more jobs, more manufacturing jobs, companies are still growing in America, businesses want to expand in America, and people — I think the elected officials sometimes on Capitol Hill, what they do is they talk about the southern border and that is immigration. That is not immigration. Immigration is what we’ve always survived on as a country. And really, it is thinking about how do we use immigration in a positive manner. If we have legal immigration into the United States of America, legal pathways into the United States, if we have pathways where people could apply for visas and come into this country for three months, six months, nine months, maybe five years, then we wouldn’t have the challenges to the magnitude that we do at our borders in our country."