The climate agenda proposed by President Biden’s administration has several objectives to achieve. Chief among them, of course, is to improve environmental conditions. However, several obstacles are being encountered along the way, the most serious of which is the need for more personnel to carry out the proposed work. Salaries have been increased and benefit improved to address this situation, and they hope the matter will improve soon.
Because of the Inflation Reduction Law, the budget for creating more environmentally friendly products (solar, wind and electric vehicles) is estimated to be around $370 billion. Since the beginning of this year, consumers can take advantage of these tax credits to upgrade their homes with solar panels or other environmentally friendly systems.
What solutions can businesses provide to the shortage of employees for Biden’s climate agenda?
To begin with, thanks to these new measures to promote respect for the environment, around 537,000 jobs will be created over the next ten years. Undoubtedly a very remarkable figure for the Biden Administration to take into account. However, businesses need to be more apprehensive about these new measures, as the significant drop in unemployment, at 3.5%, may negatively affect the creation of these new jobs.
As a result, plans to wipe fossil fuels off the map could be completely derailed. While numerous layoffs are regularly occurring and mismatches are observed in many aspects of the U.S. economy, clean energy jobs are in short supply. Experts predict that this shortage of workers will have negative consequences, especially in electric vehicles and batteries.
But it will also affect the installation of solar panels and other home efficiency options. All of this will mean that companies will have to find new employees. Some of them have already started to work on this issue, among them SK Innovation Co Ltd of Korea, in charge of manufacturing batteries for all-electric pickup trucks in Georgia, which has proceeded to increase salaries and better conditions and benefits for its employees.
Specifically, we are talking about a wage increase of between $20 and $34 per hour, well above the average wage set in Georgia, which is $18.43 per hour. In addition, the company will be responsible for 100% of life insurance costs and retirement plan matching contributions of 6.5%, also above the national average of 5.6%. The company is also responsible for providing food to its employees absolutely free of charge.