Granholm in Michigan: Where are we going to find people for all these jobs?

ANN ARBOR, MI — U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm recalls when she was Michigan’s governor the question was: Where are we going to find jobs for all these people?

Now, she said, the question is: Where are we going to find people for all these jobs?

“Every week I am attending a new ground breaking or ribbon cutting — battery factories, hydrogen projects, nuclear power plants, direct air capture facilities,” she said.

Granholm visited the Ann Arbor area Wednesday, Aug. 14, to highlight the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to create good-paying union jobs and grow the U.S. clean energy economy, calling it a new industrial revolution that has flipped the script from the days when she was governor of a state, like other states, losing manufacturing jobs to China and Mexico.

“We didn’t have a federal partner to be able to keep factories open, keep manufacturing in this country,” she said, saying the nation grew weak while losing its manufacturing backbone.

Granholm was governor starting in 2003 and through the Great Recession, leaving office in 2011.

With the Biden-Harris administration’s historic Investing in America agenda spurring new economic opportunities across the nation, Michigan is now one of the leading states for new manufacturing and clean energy projects, she said.

“Michigan has got its own industrial revolution,” she said. “We’ve got 54 factories that have been announced just in the past two and a half years in the clean energy space alone, meaning that all these factories for EVs, for batteries, you name it, are being built here, putting people to work.”

Granholm spoke Wednesday with members of the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters, a large skilled trades union group in town for its 70th-annual instructor training program at Washtenaw Community College.

She said it was great to be back in Michigan and she’s optimistic about where both the state and country are headed while embracing clean energy.

“Times have changed so much from when I was governor,” she said, telling a crowd of skilled trades apprentices from around the country they’re going to help build the new U.S. factories and facilities coming with advancements in technology and clean energy.

“These clean rooms, these data centers, the chip factories, battery companies — they all require extreme skill and precision,” she said, saying skilled union labor is needed.

“We are building now this whole new generation of factories related to the clean energy revolution because of the laws that have been passed under the Biden-Harris administration,” she added, mentioning a bipartisan infrastructure law, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act.

Those three laws are partly why the nation is seeing a lot of manufacturing activity and why private companies have announced plans for over 800 factories to locate or grow in America, Granholm said, also mentioning federal investments in electric vehicle manufacturing in states like Michigan.

“This president and vice president have said we are not going to sit on our hands and allow other countries to out-compete us in terms of getting these manufacturing jobs,” she said. “They said that we are going to make America irresistible by putting these tax incentives in place for companies who decide to locate here.”

Granholm also talked about the promising future she sees for solar and geothermal energy, and job growth.

More jobs are being created under the current administration than in any presidential term in U.S. history, she said.

“Almost 16 million jobs have been created because policy works, leadership matters,” she said, calling it an amazing time to be in the construction trades.

“We have seen now 900,000 construction trades jobs having been created under these sets of laws, more than at any time in United States history,” she said.

Calling it a building boom, Granholm said wages are up and so is union membership, while inflation is coming down, now at 2.9% — down from a high of over 9% in recent years.

“Wages have been above inflation for the past 17 months, so people are getting ahead,” she said. “We have more people employed today than at any time in U.S. history.”

UA General President Mark McManus shared some of Granholm’s enthusiasm, saying seven years ago his group’s membership was at 329,000 and now it’s about 380,000, with 58,000 apprentices. They’re seeing record numbers and growing by an average of 800 to 1,000 members per month, while chartering a new local union per month, he said.

The new jobs being created are neither blue jobs nor red jobs, Granholm emphasized.

“In fact, if you look at where all of these investments have gone, between 60% and 70% have been in red states,” she said, referring to Republican-majority states. “So, the whole country is benefitting when we as a nation invest in infrastructure.”

Granholm also expressed support for the work communities like Ann Arbor are doing to invest in renewable energy and incentivizing residents and others to do the same, including new city rebates for home energy upgrades and e-bike purchases.

“We are so grateful for communities like Ann Arbor who are really leaning in, kind of the pilot examples of what other communities can be doing,” she said, noting other federal incentives.

“If you want to install a geothermal system in your home, you can get a 30% tax credit for that,” she said. “You can get a tax credit for installing solar panels. You can get a tax credit for buying an electric vehicle.”

Michigan also is getting $200 million to help consumers install energy-efficient appliances such as electric heat pumps for homes or electric induction stoves, she said.

“All of that dovetails with the big, bold agenda that Ann Arbor has, so we’re excited to be able to see it in practice,” she said.

U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Ann Arbor, was on hand for Granholm’s visit and agreed with her message.

“We obviously are trying to protect the environment, get cleaner energy, but also creating jobs of the future,” Dingell said. “And we need to make sure we’ve got the skilled trades.”

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