The IRA Is Already Shaping a New Economy

One year ago this week, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law.

Already, we’re seeing significant economic benefits: Public investment has helped spur private investment in manufacturing construction to historic levels, and over 170,000 clean energy manufacturing jobs have been created so far.

And that’s only the beginning, as Roosevelt’s Todd N. Tucker explains.

“In the decade to come, implementation of this law will shape US markets and livelihood in ways that will ripple for generations,” Tucker writes.

More work remains, including investing in the care economy, boosting unionization rates, and using tax policy to address wealth concentration.

But one year into the IRA, we’re seeing what it looks like when government embraces its role in driving the markets and industries we need to decarbonize our economy.

Read more about the benefits unlocked by the IRA.

We Need a Care Work Industrial Policy

It’s also been a year since care investments were struck during IRA negotiations, and more than 230,000 care workers are still missing from the labor market.

That’s hurting both care workers’ well-being and economic growth, Roosevelt’s Alí Bustamante argues in a new brief.

“As implementation of the IRA continues, care work still deserves to be one of the administration’s primary issues,” Bustamante writes for the blog.

“In the absence of an industrial policy that bolsters care work, investments in various industries and the broader economy will be severely compromised, as will the economic security of care workers.”

Learn more in “The Macroeconomic Implications of Care Work.”

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