#labor-shortage

#labor-shortage

Japan's push into AI-powered robotics is driven less by competitive ambition than by demographic arithmetic. The country's population declined for a 14th consecutive year in 2024, with working-age citizens comprising just 59.6% of the total population.

"A cultural shift was needed on the job sites-not only in the minds of the workers, but also in the physical layout of a site. It may sound trivial, but placing two porta-potties at a build site instead of just one that everyone uses-measures like that are important for developing an inclusive culture."

We are hiring now to replace these workers or get more reliable alternatives, but there are not any people to hire. A landscaping firm contact described the severe labor shortage created by immigration enforcement, highlighting the inability to find replacement workers despite active hiring efforts and the critical need for workforce solutions.

We want things that we don't want to pay for

Yet Trump last month signed a proclamation "restricting entry unless employers make a $100,000 payment with the petition." The proclamation stated companies were abusing the scheme, suppressing wages, laying off domestic workers, and undermining economic and national security. Trump took particular aim at IT outsourcing companies in the proclamation, citing research that computer science and engineering graduates were facing worse prospects than biology and even art history graduates. Nothing to do with GenAI then.

A long day means heading out to the Gulf of Mexico at 1 a.m. and returning at 6 p.m., after hauling and resetting 500 wooden traps that weigh nearly 150 pounds (70 kilos) each when filled with lobsters. The work is an orchestrated frenzy: one man hauls up the trap, another pulls out the lobsters, measures them, and stows them, while another cleans the wooden cage and stacks it, ready to go back into the sea a choreography of orange overalls.

Instead, Robertson said, voters are distracted by the political noise of President Donald Trump's policies, while the real drivers of grocery sticker shock- labor shortages, and tariffs-continue to tighten their grip. Deportations have thinned fields and stripped farms of undocumented workers who "overwhelmingly" make up the agricultural workforce. At the same time, new tariffs on staples like tomatoes, coffee, and orange juice are pushing up costs on imports, leaving few affordable alternatives.