Tuesday, October 20, 2026
A 596,000 decline in foreign-born workers since January 2026, combined with a parallel drop in labor force participation among US-born workers, has left employers in construction, healthcare, agriculture, and manufacturing unable to fill open positions. The labor shortage the crackdown was supposed to solve has deepened.
International Motors, formerly Navistar, stopped building trucks in Springfield, Ohio, on Wednesday and laid off the 1,341 people on its state notice. The plant's main work, assembling Chevrolet Silverado medium-duty trucks for General Motors, ended with the contract. The buyer, Canada's Roshel, says it plans to more than double the workforce over time. The city says it has not been told when.
A country that built its post-war labour model on not relying on foreign workers now depends on them in the industries that keep it running. The policy has changed less than the practice.
Air traffic control is short-staffed at precisely the facilities that carry the most traffic, and the binding constraint is not recruitment. It is a certification pipeline whose length cannot be compressed without changing what certification means.
Hospitals, resorts, universities and manufacturers are financing workforce housing because recruitment failed for a reason no signing bonus fixes. The model has a history, and it is not a happy one.
![14-1011-039 print 8x10 b&w "D" Ward, US Naval Hospital, Quantico, VA. [Ward][Nurses][Corpsmen][Patients] Navy Medicine Historical Files Collection - Facilities](/assets/photos/travel-nursing-permanent-1600w.jpg)
Hospitals brought in contract nurses to cover a crisis and have not been able to stop. The rates came down, the dependency did not, and the permanent staff who remain now work beside colleagues paid differently for the same shift.
Decades of job training funding produced mixed results. The programs now showing measurable wage gains share one feature: an employer at the table before the curriculum is written.