January 8, 2032 · 10:20 a.m. · The White House
Liz Boden arrived with one folder and no presentation.
Susan noticed that first.
Cabinet secretaries rarely came to the White House without slides. They came with charts, staff notes, briefing books and, when they were especially uncertain, more slides.
Liz carried a yellow legal pad under one arm and a thin blue folder in her hand.
“Twenty minutes,” Susan said.
“I only need fifteen.”
Susan glanced at Maya Chen. “That's usually what people say before they take forty.”
Liz smiled and sat down.
As Liz made her way up the chain at the Commerce Department, she kept encountering the same problem in different forms.
A manufacturer wanted to expand but couldn't find enough skilled technicians. A construction project was delayed because contractors couldn't find electricians. A new facility promised hundreds of jobs, but employers worried about where the trained workers would come from.
At first, Liz thought of these as separate problems—training, education, immigration, unemployment, economic development.
Over time, she began to see them as pieces of the same problem.
America didn't simply have a shortage of workers. It had a shortage of the right skills, in the right places, connected to the right opportunities.
Her own family had taught her the other half of that lesson long before she arrived in Washington.
Elizabeth Nowak Boden was the American-born daughter of Polish immigrants, raised outside Chicago. When her father had the opportunity to come to America, he couldn't afford to do it alone. His parents contributed what they could. An older brother added some savings. Two relatives loaned him the rest.
It was, as her father later described it, the family's investment in him.
He arrived with technical skills, limited English and an acute understanding that the money behind him represented more than money. Other people had postponed things they wanted because they believed his opportunity might eventually become theirs.
He worked. He sent money home. Years later, he helped another member of the family get started.
Liz had grown up with that story. She had also watched an uncle become an electrician and a cousin eventually open a small HVAC company.
Commerce had shown her what American employers needed.
Her family had shown her how seriously people could take an opportunity when they had something of their own at stake.
Somewhere along the way, Liz had stopped thinking about those as two different things.
* * *
Liz opened the folder.
Across the top of the first page were the same three words Susan had seen earlier.
WE NEED WORKERS.
“You told Maya we're looking at Social Security from the wrong end,” Susan said.
“We are.”
“Which end?”
“The number of people paying into it.”
Liz slid the page across the table.
“Everybody downstairs is asking how much more we can collect from the workers we already have. I'm asking how many more people we can help become workers.”
Susan looked at the first list.
Electricians.
Plumbers and pipefitters.
HVAC technicians.
Construction workers.
Power-line workers.
Skilled manufacturing.
“These aren't jobs I picked because they sound useful,” Liz said. “They're occupations where the data says we need people.”
She pointed to several numbers in the margin.
Electricians were projected to have about 72,700 openings a year through 2035. Plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters, about 42,000. HVAC technicians, about 40,600. Construction laborers and helpers, roughly 137,000. And that didn't include all the other occupations being pulled by power-grid expansion, data centers, advanced manufacturing and an aging workforce.
“Most of those openings are replacements,” Liz said. “People retire. People leave the trades. Some are new jobs. Either way, somebody has to do the work.”
Susan looked up.
“And your answer is immigration.”
“No.”
The answer came quickly enough that Susan stopped turning the page.
“Immigration is the last part of it.”
“Then what's the first?”
Liz turned over her legal pad.
At the top she had written two words.
START HERE.
* * *
“We already have millions of Americans who aren't participating fully in the workforce,” Liz said. “Some are receiving assistance. Some are underemployed. Some have skills that don't match the jobs available where they live. Some would take a different path if somebody could show them one.”
“We've had job-training programs for decades.”
“Exactly.”
Susan waited.
“We measure programs,” Liz continued. “I want to measure outcomes.”
She drew a line down the center of the legal pad.
On one side she wrote: PERSON.
On the other: JOB.
“Start with documented shortages. Then work backward. If Pennsylvania needs electricians, we don't begin by asking how many people we can enroll in a training program. We ask how many qualified electricians employers actually need, what training gets someone there, and who we already have who could succeed.”
“People on assistance get priority?”
“Yes. Americans already here get the first opportunity.”
“And if they don't have the skills?”
“That's what the program is for.”
Liz described a system in which states, employers, unions, community colleges and workforce agencies would identify people who could realistically move into shortage occupations. Training would be tied to an actual job path rather than simply to completion of a course.
Employers would have to participate.
So would the people who already knew the potential workers.
“Social workers,” Susan said.
“Exactly.”
Liz didn't know Maggie Braun.
But there were thousands of people like her sitting across desks from Americans whose lives had become collections of forms, appointments and eligibility rules. They knew who was trying. They knew who needed childcare, transportation, training or simply someone to connect the pieces.
“Suppose a social worker has a client on assistance who could become an HVAC technician,” Liz said. “She gets him into the program. He completes the training. He gets hired. A year later he's still working.”
“What does the social worker get?”
“If she has federal student loans, maybe ten thousand dollars comes off the balance.”
Susan stared at her.
“Per person?”
“Per successful transition. Not for filling out a referral. Not for putting someone in a classroom. For getting someone from assistance or underemployment into a shortage occupation and keeping them there.”
“That's a bounty.”
“It's an incentive.”
“Call it whatever you want. Congress will call it a bounty.”
“Then Congress can come up with a better incentive.”
Susan smiled slightly.
“You're assuming I can get Congress to come up with anything.”
“That's why I'm here.”
* * *
The next page was labeled PRIVATE INDUSTRY.
“Employers benefit, so employers pay,” Liz said.
Companies that hired through the program would contribute a per-worker fee, similar to what many already paid recruiters and staffing firms. Some of the money could support training, credentialing, apprenticeships and administration.
“And the unions?” Susan asked.
“They'll be suspicious.”
“That's different from what you told Maya.”
“I've had another day to think.”
Susan nodded. She liked that answer.
“Some unions will worry that this is a way to find cheaper workers,” Liz continued. “So don't let it become one. Market wages. Apprenticeship standards. No replacing an existing worker with a program worker. Bring unions into designing the training.”
“Why would they agree?”
“Because if we do it right, we're creating more electricians, plumbers and technicians who can become members. More workers. More dues. More apprentices moving into careers.”
“And if we do it wrong?”
“They'll kill it. And they should.”
Susan turned another page.
“States?”
“They should love parts of it.”
“Should?”
“A person moves from assistance into a skilled job paying, say, $160,000 a year in 2032. That's not fantasy. Ford has been talking publicly about thousands of mechanic jobs that can pay well into six figures and still go unfilled because there aren't enough trained people.”
Liz turned the legal pad toward Susan.
“Use round numbers. Suppose that person had been receiving benefits and services that cost government about $30,000 a year. Once he's working at $160,000, assume he generates another $45,000 per year in combined payroll, Medicare, federal income and state and local taxes.”
She wrote two numbers.
$30,000 avoided.
$45,000 collected.
“That's roughly a $75,000 annual swing for government from one successful transition. Keep him working thirty years and you're talking about $2.25 million before you even count wage growth.”
Susan was already doing the next calculation.
“A hundred thousand workers.”
“About $7.5 billion a year. Roughly $225 billion over thirty years using the same simple assumptions.”
“And that's before the employer gets the worker it couldn't find.”
“Those are illustration numbers,” Susan said.
“Of course. Treasury will tear them apart. But the direction is what matters.”
“So everybody wins.”
“Whenever somebody says everybody wins, you should check your wallet.”
Susan laughed.
“Now you sound like David.”
“I'm saying there are enough potential winners to build a coalition.”
* * *
Susan closed the folder.
“You still haven't gotten to your family.”
Liz leaned back.
“Because my family isn't the first answer.”
“But they're part of it.”
“Yes.”
Liz told her about her father. About her uncle learning the American licensing system after already knowing the work. About friends who had come from Poland and elsewhere with skills that America needed but no simple way to match those skills to an employer.
“After we've offered these jobs to Americans, after we've trained the people we can train, after we've helped people on assistance get first priority—there will still be shortages.”
“And then?”
“Then we recruit workers from outside the country for the jobs we can prove we can't fill.”
Susan tapped the page. “We already have H-1B visas.”
“For specialty occupations, mostly jobs built around specialized higher education,” Liz said. “I'm talking about something different. Electricians. Plumbers. HVAC technicians. Skilled trades where an apprenticeship, license or technical credential may matter more than a four-year degree.”
“So this doesn't replace H-1B.”
“No. It fills a different gap—and only after we've tried to fill it with people already here.”
“Employers pick them?”
“Employers sponsor them. Government sets the shortage list and the rules. Unions help protect wage standards. States can participate based on their needs.”
“And the worker?”
“Comes legally, for a real job, at a real wage, with a path that doesn't leave him permanently owned by one employer.”
Susan raised an eyebrow.
“Owned?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
“If we're going to ask unions to support this, the immigrant worker can't be cheaper, trapped or easier to exploit than the American worker standing next to him.”
Susan looked again at the occupation list.
“Who hates this?”
Liz smiled.
“How much time do I have?”
“Apparently more than fifteen minutes.”
Liz began counting.
“Immigration restrictionists will say we're creating another immigration program. Some unions will say we're importing competition. Some employers will hate the fee and the wage rules. Budget people will hate the training subsidies and student-loan credits. Immigration advocates may say we're valuing people only for their economic usefulness.”
“Anyone else?”
“Probably people I haven't met yet.”
“Those are usually the dangerous ones.”
* * *
Liz reached for the folder, then stopped.
“There's one more piece.”
She pulled out a single sheet of paper.
There was almost nothing on it.
Just a number.
$50,000.
Susan looked at the number, then at Liz.
“What's this?”
“A Social Security contribution.”
“Paid by whom?”
“The worker.”
Susan looked up.
“You're charging an immigrant fifty thousand dollars to come to America?”
“I'm asking him to put fifty thousand dollars into the Social Security Trust Fund before he comes. We need the money now, not twenty years from now.”
“Fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money.”
“It is.”
“A qualified HVAC technician in Poland may be exactly the person we need and have nowhere near fifty thousand dollars.”
“My father didn't have the money to come here either.”
Susan looked up.
“His family put it together. Parents. Brother. Relatives. Everybody had something at risk.”
“And that's your model?”
“Part of it. I've spent my career at Commerce watching us ask how to attract workers. My family taught me to ask a different question.”
“Which is?”
“How do you identify the ones who are committed enough to bet on themselves?”
Susan tapped the paper.
“Fifty thousand dollars.”
“Give them a needed job, a legal path into America and the chance to earn every dollar of it back.”
Liz turned the legal pad toward her and wrote $160,000.
“Take the worker we were just talking about. At a six-point-two-percent employee Social Security tax, he'd pay $9,920 his first year. On his federal tax return, he gets that $9,920 back as a credit against his fifty-thousand-dollar contribution.”
Under the salary she wrote:
$50,000 contributed.
$9,920 Social Security tax paid.
$9,920 tax credit.
$40,080 still to be recovered.
“Next year, the same thing. He keeps working, he keeps paying Social Security taxes, and we keep crediting them back until he's recovered the full fifty thousand.”
“And then?”
“Then the credits stop and he pays Social Security taxes just like everybody else.”
“And if he decides after two years that America isn't for him?”
“Then he leaves. But the part he hasn't earned back stays in Social Security.”
Susan was quiet.
“Your father would have done this?”
Liz smiled.
“His whole family would have.”
* * *
Susan looked again at the numbers.
“So Social Security gets fifty thousand dollars today from someone who wasn't paying into the system yesterday.”
“Yes.”
“If he stays, works and builds a life here, he eventually gets the fifty thousand back through tax credits.”
“Yes.”
“If he leaves early, Social Security keeps whatever hasn't been recovered.”
“Yes.”
“And after he has recovered the full amount?”
“He keeps working. He keeps paying Social Security taxes. His employer keeps paying payroll taxes. Plus income taxes, Medicare taxes, state taxes, sales taxes—and if your consumption-tax idea goes anywhere, eventually that too.”
Susan picked up the page marked $50,000.
“This is going to make people very angry.”
“Probably.”
“People will say we're favoring immigrants with money.”
“Then we should hear them out. But we're not running a lottery. We're trying to fill jobs America can't fill, put cash into Social Security today, and bring in people who are serious about building a life here.”
Susan looked at Maya.
“Treasury. Labor. OMB. Commerce. And somebody who understands what this does to the states.”
Liz nodded.
“To develop it?”
“No.”
Susan slid the page across the table.
“First I want them to tell me why it won't work.”
Thirty-nine minutes.