Oregon Trail: Labor and Housing as Essential Links in the Critical Materials Supply Chain

Larry Wigger

Journal of Economic Issues, 2025, vol. 59, issue 2, 534-541

Abstract: The critical materials supply chain has yet to reckon with the negative externalities from extraction and production of the building blocks for green energy and the exponential growth in computing. Organizations have heavily invested in foreign direct investment in offshore sourcing of these critical natural resources. These geographically, hyper-concentrated supply chains have all been in the making for decades, with growing geo-political concerns on this in Africa with rare earth minerals and Asia with semiconductor fabrication. Public policy efforts through government regulation and financial incentives driving transition to green energy have to date largely ignored the challenges of operationalizing institutional adjustments in the supply chain of critical materials. For example, driving demand for battery electric vehicles has resulted in cobalt sourced in predatory, unethical, ecologically damaging fashion in the Democratic Republic of Congo, frequently with child labor, and without fostering or supporting domestic sources of same. Compounding the challenges to re-establishing domestic sources of these strategic materials are our aging workforce, declining birth rates, promotion of 4-year degrees, stigmatization of blue-collar work, and wage and housing inflation. Workforce development, including affordable housing, is integral to re-shoring extraction and production activities and re-establishing domestic supply of these critical material supply chains.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/00213624.2025.2493561

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