Policy Currents | The newsletter for policy people
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* May 29, 2025
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The U.S. Needs 430,000 New Construction Workers

The United States is facing one challenge that threatens everything from its competitive edge in high-tech manufacturing to overcoming the grinding housing crisis: There are not nearly enough construction workers.

According to a recent RAND paper, expanding construction apprenticeship programs and improving their completion rates could help. Currently, the typical apprenticeship program is very small and very competitive, and about 40 percent of apprentices drop out before they make it to the end of their program.

Apprenticeships alone, however, will not be sufficient. That's because the United States would need to add more than 430,000 new construction workers this year to keep up with demand. Filling such a large gap will require identifying and investing in other pathways into construction jobs.

Without action, the impacts could be substantial: The cost of building anything will go up, and both residential and commercial construction will end up on the back burner--potentially prolonging the housing crisis and halting progress on building new manufacturing and semiconductor facilities. As the paper's authors put it, "The United States must first rebuild its construction workforce in order to rebuild the country."

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U.S.-China AI Competition: Where America's Real Advantage Lies

China will likely match U.S. AI model capabilities this year, rattling confidence about America's technological edge. But according to RAND's Lennart Heim, U.S. policymakers should avoid overreacting to such "predictable Chinese advancements." The United States maintains an advantage in total compute capacity, he says. And if leveraged strategically, this edge will "play an extraordinary role in driving economic transformation, securing technological leadership, and shaping the global AI ecosystem."

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ASEAN Falls Short Again

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, is Southeast Asia's premier regional bloc. But according to RAND's Derek Grossman, there's a long and growing list of how the organization has failed to live up to its leadership expectations. The latest example: ASEAN was unable to mount a collective response to U.S. tariffs. But the bloc has also struggled to address disputes in the South China Sea and failed to deal with the civil war in Myanmar. These cases show that when ASEAN must resolve intraregional differences, it often falls short.

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- RAND's Paul Cormarie and Florian Galleri of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discuss France's nuclear doctrine.
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** Events
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Deep Seabed Mining: What Might Happen Next?
Monday, June 9, 2025 (Online)
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** Policy Minded, RAND's Flagship Podcast
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On Policy Minded, we pick the brains of the world's top policy experts. In each episode, RAND researchers join us for conversations that go beyond the headlines--bringing you insights you can't find anywhere else.

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