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    Fed Chair Powell in Jackson Hole: Inflation Fight Isn’t Over

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    Jerome H. Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve, struck a resolute tone in a speech at the central bank’s most closely watched conference.Jerome H. Powell kept the door open to future interest rate increases during his speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s annual Jackson Hole conference in Wyoming.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesJerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, pledged during a closely watched speech that his central bank would stick by its push to stamp out high inflation “until the job is done” and said that officials stood ready to raise interest rates further if needed.Mr. Powell, who was speaking Friday at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s annual Jackson Hole conference in Wyoming, said that the Fed would “proceed carefully” as it decided whether to make further policy adjustments after a year and a half in which it had pushed interest rates up sharply.But even as Mr. Powell emphasized that the Fed was trying to balance the risk of doing too much and hurting the economy more than is necessary against the risk of doing too little, he was careful not to take a victory lap around a recent slowing in inflation. His speech hammered home one main point: Officials want to see more progress to convince them that they are truly bringing price increases under control.“The message is the same: It is the Fed’s job to bring inflation down to our 2 percent goal, and we will do so,” Mr. Powell said, comparing his speech to a stern set of remarks he delivered at last year’s Jackson Hole gathering.Central bankers have lifted interest rates to a range of 5.25 to 5.5 percent, up from near-zero as recently as March 2022, in a bid to cool the economy and wrestle inflation lower. They have been keeping the door open to the possibility of one more rate increase, and have been clear that they expect to leave interest rates elevated for some time.Mr. Powell kept that message alive on Friday.“We are prepared to raise rates further if appropriate, and intend to hold policy at a restrictive level until we are confident that inflation is moving sustainably down toward our objective,” he said.But the Fed chair noted that “at upcoming meetings we are in a position to proceed carefully as we assess the incoming data and the evolving outlook and risks,” and that officials would “decide whether to tighten further or, instead, to hold the policy rate constant and await further data.”That suggests that central bankers are not determined to raise interest rates at their upcoming meeting in September. Instead, they might wait until later in the year — they have meetings in November and December — before making a decision about whether borrowing costs need to climb further. Striking a patient stance would give officials more time to assess how the moves they have already made are affecting the economy.“I think this does pave the way for a pause at the September meeting, and leaves their options open after,” said Laura Rosner-Warburton, senior economist at MacroPolicy Perspectives. “We’re close to the top, we may be there, and they’re going to move carefully.”Mr. Powell made clear that the Fed was not in a rush to raise rates again, but he remained cautious about the risk of further inflation.Price increases have come down notably in recent months, to around 3 percent as measured by the Fed’s preferred gauge. That is still higher than the Fed’s 2 percent inflation goal, though it is down sharply from a 7 percent peak last summer.And there are signs of stubbornness lingering under the surface. After stripping out food and fuel for a look at the underlying trend, the central bank’s preferred inflation gauge is still running at about twice the Fed’s goal.“The process still has a long way to go, even with the more favorable recent readings,” Mr. Powell said. “We can’t yet know the extent to which these lower readings will continue or where underlying inflation will settle over coming quarters.”That is partly because the Fed is trying to assess how much its policy adjustments are really weighing on the economy and, through it, inflation.The Fed’s higher borrowing costs have been cutting into demand for cars and houses by making auto loans and mortgages more expensive, and they are probably discouraging business expansions and cooling the job market.But it is unclear just how severely the Fed’s current policy setting is weighing on the economy. Rates are much higher than the level that most economists think is necessary to keep the economy growing below its potential run rate, but such estimates are subject to error.“There is always uncertainty about the precise level of monetary policy restraint,” Mr. Powell acknowledged Friday.That is particularly relevant in the face of recent economic data, which has been surprisingly strong. Consumers continue to spend and companies continue to hire at a solid clip in the face of the Fed’s onslaught. The resilience has caused some economists to warn that there is a risk that the economy could speed back up, keeping inflation elevated.“We are attentive to signs that the economy may not be cooling as expected,” Mr. Powell said. “Additional evidence of persistently above-trend growth could put further progress on inflation at risk and could warrant further tightening of monetary policy.”Still, Mr. Powell also emphasized that the economy could be taking time to react to the policy moves already made, and that conditions are unusual in the wake of the pandemic: For instance, job openings have fallen by an unusual amount without pushing up unemployment.“This uncertainty underscores the need for agile policymaking,” he said.Mr. Powell’s counterpart, Christine Lagarde, who heads the European Central Bank, made a similar point about policy in the euro economy and globally during a separate speech at the Jackson Hole conference — though the uncertainties she emphasized were more long term.She underlined that the economy is changing fundamentally as labor shortages span many markets, technologies like artificial intelligence develop, and countries shift away from fossil fuels and toward green energy. And she said that in a changing world, overreliance on models and past data — or expressing too much confidence — would be a mistake.“There is no pre-existing playbook for the situation we are facing today — and so our task is to draw up a new one,” she said. “Policymaking in an age of shifts and breaks requires an open mind and a willingness to adjust our analytical frameworks in real-time to new developments.”But Ms. Lagarde emphasized that it was critical to remain committed to achieving price stability, at the central bank’s current 2 percent inflation target, even in an uncertain world.Mr. Powell seemed to agree. During his own speech, he shot down a growing round of speculation among economists that the Fed could — or should — raise its inflation goal, which would make it easier to hit.“Two percent is and will remain our inflation target,” he said.And he finished the talk with the same line that he used to conclude his speech at last year’s Jackson Hole gathering, which was roundly seen as an aggressive stance against inflation.“We will keep at it until the job is done,” he said.Eshe Nelson contributed reporting. More

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    U.S. Jobs Total 300,000 Less Than in Earlier Data Through March

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    Revised figures for the year that ended in March show 300,000 fewer jobs at the close of the period than previously reported.The red-hot American job market might be just a couple of degrees cooler than previously believed.There were 306,000 fewer nonagricultural jobs in the United States in March than initially reported, according to revised data released by the Labor Department on Wednesday. That suggests employers added jobs at a slightly slower rate in 2022 and early 2023 than more timely — but less accurate — monthly data suggested.The revisions, which are preliminary, don’t change the big picture: Job growth has slowed since the initial wave of post-lockdown reopening, but has remained surprisingly resilient. Even after the latest revision, there were 2.8 million more jobs in March than before the pandemic began. (Employers have added another 870,000 jobs since then, according to the Labor Department, although those figures, too, will eventually be subject to revision.)The data released Wednesday is part of an annual process in which monthly estimates, which are based on a survey of employers, are brought into alignment with more definitive data from state unemployment insurance records. The revisions will be formally incorporated into government figures early next year.The recent strength of the job market has surprised economists, who expected the rapid increase in interest rates to lead to a more significant slowdown in hiring. Some forecasters thought that the monthly jobs figures were overstating hiring, and that the annual update would show a substantial downward revision.That didn’t happen: The Labor Department lowered its estimate of employment by just 0.2 percent, which is in line with historical revisions.The revisions were larger for certain industries. Employment in transportation and warehousing, which boomed during the pandemic but has since slowed, was revised down by nearly 150,000 jobs, or 2.2 percent. White-collar industries like information and professional services also added fewer jobs than initially reported. Retail and wholesale companies, on the other hand, hired more workers than monthly figures suggested, as did employers in the public sector. More

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    In a Hot Job Market, the Minimum Wage Becomes an Afterthought

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    The federal wage floor of $7.25 is increasingly irrelevant when even most teenagers are earning twice that. But what happens when the economy cools?Under New Hampshire law, Janette Desmond can pay the employees who scoop ice cream and cut fudge at her Portsmouth sweet shop as little as $7.25 an hour.But with the state unemployment rate under 2 percent, the dynamics of supply and demand trump the minimum wage: At Ms. Desmond’s store, teenagers working their first summer jobs earn at least $14 an hour.“I could take a billboard out on I-95 saying we’re hiring, $7.25 an hour,” Ms. Desmond said. “You know who would apply? Nobody. You couldn’t hire anybody at $7.25 an hour.”The red-hot labor market of the past two years has led to rapid pay increases, particularly in retail, hospitality and other low-wage industries. It has also rendered the minimum wage increasingly meaningless.Nationally, only about 68,000 people on average earned the federal minimum wage in the first seven months of 2023, according to a New York Times analysis of government data. That is less than one of every 1,000 hourly workers. Walmart, once noted for its rock-bottom wages, pays workers at least $14 an hour, even where it can legally pay roughly half that.Hardly anyone makes $7.25 anymoreAverage number of workers earning federal minimum wage

    Note: 2023 data is through July.Source: Current Population Survey, via IPUMSBy The New York TimesThere are still places where the minimum wage has teeth. Thirty states, along with dozens of cities and other local jurisdictions, have set minimums above the federal mark, in some cases linking them to inflation to help ensure that pay keeps up with the cost of living.But even there, most workers earn more than the legal minimum.“The minimum wage is almost irrelevant,” said Robert Branca, who owns nearly three dozen Dunkin’ Donuts stores in Massachusetts, where the minimum is $15. “I have to pay what I have to pay.”As a result, the minimum wage has faded from the economic policy debate. President Biden, who tried and failed to pass a $15 minimum wage during his first year in office, now rarely mentions it, although he has made the economy the centerpiece of his re-election effort. The Service Employees International Union, which helped found the Fight for $15 movement more than a decade ago, has shifted its focus to other policy levers, though it continues to support higher minimum wages.Opponents, too, seem to have moved on: When Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives voted this year to raise the state’s $7.25 minimum wage to $15 by 2026, businesses, at least aside from seasonal industries in rural areas, shrugged. (The measure has stalled in the state’s Republican-controlled Senate.)“Our members are not concerned,” said Ben Fileccia, a senior vice president at the Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association. “I have not heard about anybody being paid minimum wage in a very long time.”The question is what will happen when the labor market cools. In inflation-adjusted terms, the federal minimum is worth less than at any time since 1949. That means that workers in states like Pennsylvania and New Hampshire could struggle to hold on to their recent gains if employers regain leverage.Congress hasn’t voted to raise the minimum wage since George W. Bush was president — in 2007, he signed a law to bring the floor to $7.25 by 2009. It remains there 14 years later, the longest period without an increase since the nationwide minimum was established in 1938.As the federal minimum flatlined, however, the Fight for $15 campaign was succeeding at the state and local levels. Cities like Seattle and San Francisco adopted a $15 minimum wage, followed by states like New York and Massachusetts. And while Republican legislatures opposed raising minimums, voters often overruled them: Missouri, Florida, Arkansas and other Republican-dominated states have passed increases through ballot measures in the past decade.Nationwide, the number of people earning the minimum wage fell steadily, from nearly two million when the $7.25 floor took effect to about 400,000 in 2019. (Those figures omit people earning less than the minimum wage, which can in some cases include teenagers, people with certain disabilities or tipped workers.)Then Covid-19 upended the low-wage labor market. Millions of cooks, waiters, hotel housekeepers and retail workers lost their jobs; those who stayed on as “essential workers” often received hazard pay or bonuses. As businesses began to reopen in 2020 and 2021, demand for goods and services rebounded much faster than the supply of workers to deliver them. That left companies scrambling for employees — and gave workers rare leverage.The result was a labor market increasingly untethered to the official minimum wage. In New Hampshire, the 10th percentile wage — the level at which 90 percent of workers earn more — was just above $10 in May 2019. By May 2022, that figure had jumped to $13.64, and local business owners say it has continued to rise.Making more than the minimumLow-wage workers are making more than their state’s minimum wage nearly everywhere, but especially in states that haven’t raised their wage floors above the federal level of $7.25 an hour. (The 10th percentile wage is the pay rate at which 90 percent of workers in a state earn more.)

    Notes: Minimum wages are as of January 2022. Pay data is as of May 2022. Minimum wages in some cities and localities may be higher than the state minimum.Source: Labor DepartmentBy The New York Times“Today you’re looking at $15 an hour and saying I wish that’s all we had to pay,” said David Bellman, who owns a jewelry store in Manchester, N.H.The unemployment rate in New Hampshire was low before the pandemic; at 1.7 percent in July, it is now among the lowest rates ever recorded anywhere in the country. Competition for workers is fierce: The Wendy’s on Mr. Bellman’s drive home from work advertises wages of $18 an hour. At his own store, he is paying $17 to $20 an hour and recently hired someone away from the local bagel shop — his son had noticed that she seemed like a hard worker.“Basically the only way to hire anybody is to take them away from somebody else,” Mr. Bellman said.New Hampshire is surrounded by states where the minimum wage is above $13, so if Granite State employers tried to offer substantially less, many workers could cross the border for a bigger paycheck. But even in states like Alabama and Mississippi, where the cost of living is lower and where few neighboring states have minimum wages above the federal standard, most employers are finding they have to pay well above $7.25.Paige Roberts, president and chief executive of the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce in Mississippi, said she was “nearly laughed out of a job” when she started asking members about paying the minimum wage. Entry-level jobs there pay about $12 an hour, according to the local unemployment office.In states with higher minimums, the picture is more nuanced. Faster hikes in the wage floor in the late 2010s forced up long-stagnant wages in fields like restaurants and retail. And some businesses, such as summer camps, say they are still paying the minimum wage for entry-level workers or those in training. But for the most part, the minimums no longer exert the strong upward pressure on pay that they did when they were adopted.When New Jersey passed a minimum-wage law in 2019, many businesses complained that the increases were too aggressive: The floor would rise by at least a dollar an hour every year until it hit $15 in 2024. But recently, the hot job market has levitated the wage scale even more.Jeanne Cretella starts workers in her New Jersey restaurants and event venues at $15 an hour, though the state’s minimum won’t reach that figure until next year.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times“Covid kind of shifted things around a bit, as did inflation,” said Jeanne Cretella, whose business, Landmark Hospitality, operates 14 venues in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.Before the pandemic, dishwashers and other entry-level employees at Landmark typically made the minimum wage. These days, Ms. Cretella starts workers in New Jersey at $15 an hour, though the state’s minimum won’t hit that mark until next year.When the Fight for $15 movement began, many economists warned that raising the minimum wage too high or too quickly could lead to job losses. Some studies did find modest negative effects on employment, particularly for teenagers and others on the margins of the labor market. But for the most part, researchers found that pay went up without widespread layoffs or business failures.Some economists still wondered what would happen as $15 minimum wages spread beyond high-cost coastal cities. But that was before the pandemic reshaped the low-wage labor market.“We’re kind of in different territory now,” said Jacob Vigdor, an economist at the University of Washington who has studied the issue.Washington has the highest statewide minimum wage, at $15.74. Yet when Mr. Vigdor recently visited Aberdeen, a small town near the Pacific coast, all business owners wanted to talk about was how to retain workers.“I did not really hear a lot of concern about those minimum wages,” he said. “There the concern is that they’re losing people.”Still, economists say the minimum wage could become relevant again when the labor market eventually cools and workers lose bargaining power.David Neumark, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, said states with high minimum wages could be at a disadvantage in a recession, because employers would have to keep pay high as demand softened, potentially leading to layoffs.Other economists have the opposite concern: that workers in states where the minimum wage remains $7.25 could see their recent gains evaporate when they no longer have the leverage to demand more.“It’s as tenuous as it gets,” said Kathryn Anne Edwards, a labor economist and policy consultant. “The labor market has gained ground, but policy has not cemented that territory.”Despite the strong labor market, many workers say they barely get by.KaSondra Wood has spent much of her adult life working for the minimum wage, from the army depot where she held her first job, earning $5.15 an hour, to the Little Caesars where she made $7.25 as recently as last year.But not anymore: This summer, she started a job cleaning rooms at a local hotel, earning $12 an hour. Even in Oneonta, Ala., a rural area with few job opportunities, employers know better than to try hiring at the minimum wage.“They wouldn’t advertise for it, knowing they wouldn’t get anyone in there,” she said.But Ms. Wood, 38, hardly feels that she is getting ahead. The hotel is a 45-minute drive from her home, so gas eats up much of her paycheck, even though she car-pools with her mother. Groceries keep getting more expensive.“A couple years ago, $12 an hour would’ve been killer money,” she said. But now, it isn’t enough to pay her bills.“I don’t ever get caught up,” she said. “I’m broke by the time I get paid.” More

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    UPS Workers Avert Strike by Approving New Contract

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    The vote by members of the Teamsters union removes a potential threat to the economy.Averting a strike that could have shaken the U.S. economy, the union representing more than 300,000 United Parcel Service employees announced Tuesday that its members had ratified a new labor agreement with the shipping giant.The union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said that its UPS members approved the five-year contract with more than 86 percent support.The Teamsters have said that the agreement includes wage gains of at least $7.50 an hour for current employees over its five-year term. It also raises the minimum pay for part-time workers to $21 an hour from under $17, and raises the top rate for full-time delivery drivers to about $49 on average.Under the previous contract, which expired on Aug. 1, full-time drivers made an average of about $42 an hour after four years on the job.In a statement, the union’s president, Sean O’Brien, said the contract was the most lucrative ever at UPS and would serve as a model for other workers that the union is seeking to organize. “This is the template for how workers should be paid and protected nationwide, and nonunion companies like Amazon better pay attention,” Mr. O’Brien said.The Teamsters have made unionizing Amazon a top priority in recent years, and Mr. O’Brien said while running for the union’s presidency in 2021 that doing so would first require big, concrete gains at other companies.Despite the ratification, the new UPS contract will not take effect immediately. The union said in its statement that a group of workers in Florida voted down a supplement to the national contract that covers about 175 members — one of 44 supplements that the union also negotiated.The union said its negotiators would immediately meet with UPS to resolve the remaining issues so that those Florida members can vote again. The national contract will take effect once the supplement is approved.UPS declined to comment beyond a brief news release noting the ratification vote and stating that the Florida supplement would be “finalized shortly.”The Teamsters had been aggressive in mobilizing members and ratcheting up pressure on the company in recent months, including picket-line practice and training sessions for strike captains. Mr. O’Brien has frequently referred to corporate leaders as a “white-collar crime syndicate” and argued that “this multibillion-dollar corporation has plenty to give American workers — they just don’t want to.”UPS moves about one-quarter of the tens of millions of packages shipped in the United States each day, according to the Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index. Its adjusted net income rose more than 70 percent from 2019 to last year, reaching more than $11 billion.The negotiations on a national contract began in April, and the union announced in mid-June that its members had voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike.The two sides resolved many key issues by early July, including eliminating a lower-paid category of full-time driver that had angered many UPS employees, and requiring air conditioning in new trucks to improve heat safety. But then negotiations broke down, with the Teamsters arguing that the company had not offered sufficient improvements in pay for part-time workers, who make up more than half of the union’s UPS members.Mr. O’Brien and the union spent the next few weeks condemning what they sometimes referred to as “part-time poverty” jobs, before the sides resumed negotiating in late July and quickly finalized a tentative deal.UPS employees represented by the union began voting on the agreement in early August. While some part-time workers continued to argue that the wage gains should have been even larger and urged a “no” vote, the final margin suggested that most were satisfied with the deal. More

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    Can Affluence and Affordable Housing Coexist in Colorado’s Rockies?

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    In the recreation-fueled, amenity-rich economy of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain region, there are two peak seasons: summer, with its rafting, hiking, fishing and biking, and the cold months filled with skiing and other winter activities.And then there is “mud season” — a liminal moment in spring when the alpine environment, slowly then suddenly, begins to thaw and only a trickle of tourists linger.It’s a period that workers in other places might bemoan. But for much of the financially stretched work force serving the assemblage of idyllic mountain towns across the state, a brief drop-off in business this spring was a respite.During a slow shift on a 51-degree day at the Blue Stag Saloon — a nook on Main Street in the vacation hub of Breckenridge — Michelle Badger, a veteran server, half-joked with her co-workers that “this winter was hell.”Crowds were larger than ever. And workers in the old Gold Rush town still enjoy the highs of the easy camaraderie and solid tips that come with service jobs in the area. But it was all sobered by the related headaches of soaring rents and acute understaffing, which left employees, managers and demanding customers feeling strained.Working in mountain towns like Breckenridge and others in Summit County — including Silverthorne, Dillon and Frisco — would feel like a fairer bargain, Ms. Badger and her colleagues said, if they could better afford living close by. Long commutes are common throughout America. But rental prices in hamlets among the wilderness on the outskirts of town are becoming burdensome too.Job growth has severely outpaced the stock of shelter throughout Colorado. Median rent in Frisco — which a decade ago was considered a modest “bedroom community” for commuting employees — is about $4,000 a month, according to Zillow, and 90 percent above the national median. Residential property prices in Summit County are up 63 percent in just the past year, even amid higher interest rates. Cash buyers buttressed by family money abound.The wage floor for most jobs in and around the county — from line cook to ski lift operator — is at least $18 an hour, or roughly $37,000 a year. Yet for those not lucky enough to land a rare slot in subsidized local employee housing, it’s not uncommon to live an hour or more away to attain a livable budget.As that happens, the contingent displaced by the rich ripples outward down rural highway corridors and, in turn, displaces the farther-flung working poor.Inequality has always been rampant within the orbit of popular destinations. But the financial knock-on effects of those ritzy spheres have expanded as the pandemic-induced surge in remote work has supercharged divides.Wanderlust-filled white-collar workers abruptly discovered that multiweek visits or even permanent relocations were possible for them and their families. Those seeking investment properties saw the opportunities of this hybrid-driven land rush as well, and pounced.Longtime residents have had a front-row seat.Matt Scheer — a 48-year-old musician who grew up on a ranch eastward in El Paso County, where “as soon as we could carry the milk bucket we were milking the cow” — is the sort of extroverted jack-of-all-trades who typifies the spirit (and the wistful brand) of Summit County.Matt Scheer feels lucky to have bought a house 11 years ago when homes were more affordable and mortgage rates lower. But he feels unable to move.Having moved near Breckenridge in the early 2000s to ski, hike, fly fish and work around town, he’s relieved that he managed to pick up his place in 2012 for $240,000 with a fixed-rate mortgage. Prices in his tucked-away French Creek neighborhood — a hilly, unincorporated patch with modest double-wide manufactured homes — have more than tripled.Though he’s a loyal resident with little interest in ever moving, Mr. Scheer said he “can’t really leave.”For a payout of tens of thousands of dollars from the local government, he recently signed onto a hefty “deed restriction” for his property, banning its use for Airbnb stays, limiting any potential renter or buyer to the work force of Summit, and limiting any potential resale price. And he did it with pride.It’s part of a growing program led by Breckenridge and other local governments to limit gentrification without licensing a large buildup of new developments. (Deed restrictions in destination areas got off to a quieter start in the 2010s but have ticked up.)Incumbent property owners willing to sacrifice lucrative short-term vacation rental income see it as a fair trade-off, key to keeping long-term residents and the dashing contours of their towns’ terrain. Policy critics, and frustrated local renters fighting over limited spots, say it is an inadequate tool for the scale and source of the problem: a lack of units.Those critics include the governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, who is skeptical that lump-sum payments to owners in exchange for deed restrictions will be a sufficient incentive to broadly move the needle on affordability.“There is no silver bullet,” he said in an interview. “But one of the areas that we have focused on is removing the barriers to additional home construction.” He added that “housing is not a problem that you can solve by throwing more money at the existing housing stock.”His sweeping legislation to ensure “a home for every Colorado budget” by pre-empting local land-use laws and directly loosening zoning rules statewide died in the State Senate in May, after some initial momentum. All but one of the mayors in the state’s Metro Mayors Caucus issued a letter opposing the plan.‘It’s Either Five Mil or Five Jobs’As politicians jockey, many resourceful Coloradans find ways to make do.Mr. Scheer, for instance, has picked up over 30 music gigs through the end of summer, paying about $100 an hour — though he acknowledges it’s his locked-in, lower housing costs that make his lifestyle workable.During a practice jam session and impromptu afternoon party of 20- to 40-somethings at Mr. Scheer’s place in the spring, his pal and fellow guitarist, Bud Hallock (the other half of their occasional duo band, Know Good People), explained the grind people face by echoing the playfully hard-nosed aphorism uttered around town: “It’s either five mil or five jobs.”“If you’re willing to put in the work, you’ll be able to,” argues Mr. Hallock, who moved out West shortly after graduating from St. Lawrence University in 2015. Mr. Hallock has three jobs, he said, adding, “I don’t think it’s the God-given right of anyone to come to a ski town and have it easy.”For many longtime residents and transplants alike, it has become harder to finesse: Even as Summit County adds waves of remote workers, it has experienced net negative migration since 2020. It’s a trend mirrored in the larger urban areas of Denver and Boulder, where the share of people working remotely is among the highest in the country, as homelessness rises.Breckenridge and other local governments are offering payments to some homeowners who agree to restrictions on how their property can be used and sold.Summit County is a draw for residents that enjoy outdoor activities like hiking, skiing and water sports.Seventy percent of residences in the county are second homes that sit vacant most of the year or serve as short-term rentals.Tamara Pogue, a member of Summit County’s governing board, said the mountain towns and valley cities of the Front Range near Fort Collins and Colorado Springs as well as those out by the Western Slope struggled with an “affordability issue” similar to the nation’s big cities for the same reason: “We’re supply-constrained.”“The problem is the average cost of a single-family home in Summit County so far this year is $2.14 million,” Ms. Pogue said. “Not one job makes that affordable.”The stock available is limited: 70 percent of homes in the county are second homes that sit vacant most of the year or serve as short-term rentals, she said, typically Airbnbs.As a single mother of three, Ms. Pogue bought a 1,400-square-foot duplex for $525,000 in 2018 — a rarity, if not an impossibility, now. She said a determination to prevent “mountain communities” from becoming “towns without townspeople” had driven her to become a staunch YIMBY, or a “yes in my backyard” supporter of home-building efforts, against the wishes of perceived NIMBYs, or the “not in my backyard” voices.Ms. Pogue and her allies argue that the relatively slow pace of building in the Rockies, despite the area’s popularity and rising prices, is a subtle form of denial.“Everyone wants to be here, whether they work here or not,” she added, “and so we have this spiral.”If, When, Where and How to Build MoreA few affordable-housing projects visibly chug along in Summit near the airport service road, not far from Kingdom Park Court, one of a handful of mobile home parks in the county with pricey lot rents. But getting middle-income developments greenlit can be a slog. Many proponents of limiting development note that about 80 percent of the county is restricted federal public land, putting a ceiling on what can be done. (There’s a nascent pilot program with the U.S. Forest Service to approve some apartments on leased land.) In the meantime, the well-off are gobbling up much of what’s left.Just north of downtown Silverthorne sits Summit Sky Ranch — a sprawling development with homes starting around $1 million, with a pledge of “bringing modern mountain living to over 400 acres of pristine natural beauty” in the valley. It quickly sold out and many have moved in, lured by a private observatory and private access to a river bend.Laurie Best, the longtime planning manager for housing in the community development department for the Town of Breckenridge, said she had emphasized deed-restriction policies and more generally trying to preserve existing units to reduce the need for new ones.Ms. Best and her backers have acceded to some construction at a slow and steady pace, but they staunchly oppose taller, dense multifamily buildings, which are not, as she put it, “consistent with the character of the town.”In several counties, there has been a swell in “conservation easements” — legal agreements between private landowners and local governments to guard wildlife and scenic open space by permanently banning development. The trend led the state to create a Division of Conservation in 2018 with an oversight commission to authenticate the contracts.A construction site in Silverthorne, Colo. Some officials and residents in the area have acceded to limited construction but are wary of adding taller, dense multifamily buildings.Eric Budd, a leader of a movement in Colorado called Bedrooms Are for People — which favors expanding land use and more widely permitting apartments, duplexes and triplexes — scoffs at the uptick in easements. He contends that what he tartly calls a “xenophobic attitude of ‘there’s only so much to go around’” is self-defeating.Trying to restrict access to a hot commodity — in this case, half of a state — won’t end well for anyone, he said, and a California-level, cost-of-living crisis is only five or 10 years away.Down in the foothills of the Rockies in Boulder, where Mr. Budd lives, school enrollment and the overall population have declined along with affordability, as remote-worker migration has picked up.In some sense, the arguments against restrictionism amount to a water-balloon analogy: squeezing leads to odd bulges in random places.Before the pandemic, Leadville, an old mining town 15 minutes from the trailhead of the highest peak in the Rockies, was an affordable harbor for working-class Hispanic employees of the nearby vacation economies: just out of reach of the affluence around Aspen to the west and resorts near Vail to the north.Since 2020, though, Leadville has become engulfed as those realms of wealth expand and overlap, causing rents and home prices to spike beyond what many can feasibly afford over time, with few other places to go.Second-home owners constituted half of all home sales in 2020 and 2021.The Downside of Good IntentionsKimberly Kreissig, a real estate agent, at a home she was selling in Steamboat Springs. She says an effort to build affordable homes yielded house flippers.Half of Colorado renters are officially defined as cost-burdened — spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs. And local economists suggest that the rate has ticked even higher in mountain locales.For Kimberly Kreissig, a real estate agent in Steamboat Springs, a year-round recreation hub with natural hot springs near Wyoming, the affordability crisis in “the high country” has no simple villain. For years, her practice in Steamboat — where the average home price is above $1 million, compared with $580,000 in early 2019 — included both upper-middle-class, first-time home buyers and luxury-market sellers.In 2018, she and her husband, a developer, broke ground on a dense, 50-unit multifamily project in Steamboat designed for people “in that $75,000 range,” she said — “for instance, my office manager here.”“We had grandiose plans that we were going to be able to sell these things for $300,000,” Ms. Kreissig said, but they were foiled by several factors.Even before Covid-19 struck, “the demand was just so through the roof that people were offering us more than list price right out of the chutes,” she said, with precontract bids coming in “twice as high as we anticipated.”Then, once lockdowns in early 2020 ended, the remote-working cohort swooped in — just as labor and material costs shot up for the contractors still finishing some units. Before long, many families she sold units to in 2019 for around $400,000 realized that because of the housing boom they had “over $300,000 in equity” in their homes — and with interest rates so low, they could parlay a different (or additional) purchase. Many apartment owners began independently flipping their units to investors and buyers of second homes who were willing to pay well above the list prices.The Yampa River flows through Steamboat Springs. With the pandemic’s onset, the area became a magnet for remote workers.Diners at a restaurant in Steamboat Springs, a year-round recreation hub with natural hot springs.“For the people that are already ‘in,’ there’s a fair share of folks that are saying, you know, ‘I’m in, we don’t we don’t need any more growth,’” Ms. Kreissig said. “But you can’t stop growth.”“One flip near the end for one of the units was for $800,000,” Ms. Kreissig said. “We tried to be the good guys.”One way to respond to house flippers is through greater deed restriction, which Steamboat has enforced in a few neighborhoods, along with some short-term rental restrictions, not unlike other hot spots. The area has also benefited from the state’s Middle Income Housing Authority pilot program, which has put up a few buildings in town. But Steamboat still has a shortage of 1,400 units, according to a report from local authorities.A big break came when an anonymous donor recently purchased a 534-acre farm property, Brown Ranch, and turned it over to the Yampa Valley Housing Authority, with instructions that it be used for long-term affordable housing for local workers.It came as welcome news to the area’s middle class. And yet the sheer surprise, and luck, of the donation is indicative of broader, underlying tensions that typically drive community-level and state debates: Is more supply a threat to both cultural vibes and property price appreciation, or a win-win opportunity to flourish?Ms. Kreissig thinks it all comes back to “the kind of ‘not in my backyard’ mentality” that a silent majority holds.“For the people that are already ‘in,’ there’s a fair share of folks that are saying, ‘You know, ‘I’m in, we don’t we don’t need any more growth,’” she said. “But you can’t stop growth.”Adrift Between Uphill and DownNancy Leatham and her husband got back on their feet after lean times early in the pandemic. But when looking for a new house, she found that the booming housing market had far outpaced the good labor market. In March 2020, Nancy Leatham, 34, was making just above the minimum wage, living with her husband and their baby daughter in Idaho Springs — a little city above 7,000 feet wedged between a steep crag and an I-70 exit, far downhill from chic resort land.They struggled to get by “right during the height of the pandemic, when everything was shut down,” wiping out their income, she said. It felt like a repeat of her teenage years during the mortgage-induced financial crisis when her family’s business as excavation contractors — preparing sites for home construction — went belly-up, and their house was foreclosed upon.In spring 2020, “I had to start going to food banks and stuff to get food,” she said. “And we had to sell a car, and just stuff like that to, like, to make ends meet.”By 2021, her husband, Austin, had found a job at Walmart making $19 an hour, while she was promoted at Starbucks, becoming a manager at $18 an hour, plus bonus — and “we had our child tax credit,” she added.“I started looking for a house because we had really great income,” roughly $80,000 before taxes, she said. “I grew up in poverty, since 2008 especially, and we’d been living with food insecurity and stuff, so I was like ‘Look at us, we made it!’”But almost as soon as she started house hunting, she realized that, within months, the booming housing market had far outpaced the good labor market. They had been priced out of their sleepy, snowy town, after merely a few bidding wars. The average home price — $340,000 at the start of 2019 — is up 66 percent. Higher mortgage rates hurt, too.The Gold Mountain Village Apartments, where Ms. Leatham and her husband live, about 10 miles outside Idaho Springs, Colo.The Historic Argo Mill and Tunnel, a former gold mining and milling property, in Idaho Springs.Lower-income workers are being priced out of the area and face the prospect of “having to move downhill.”The average home price in Idaho Springs is up 66 percent since the start of 2019.Many of the Starbucks employees Ms. Leatham managed owned their homes rather than rented, she said, and “half left because they were able to sell their house off for considerably more than they were when they bought.”Hoping to buy or rent something bigger than what she called a “closet” apartment, Ms. Leatham, who now has a second child, is preparing for the cold reality of “having to move downhill” — though where exactly is unclear: 15 miles down the corridor, renters and buyers run into coveted areas near Golden and Denver.Recently, a woman visited the Starbucks Ms. Leatham works at, she said, and was dressed very much like an out-of-towner. They chit-chatted at the register, and the woman mentioned she was in town to check on a recent property purchase.Getting her hopes up for a nicer place, Ms. Leatham pried a bit:“I was like, ‘Oh, nice, what are you going to do with it?’ And she’s like, ‘Oh, it’s for rental.’”“And I’m like, ‘Oh, cool.’ And then she goes, ‘Short-term rental.’”“And then, I went ‘Dang it!’ But really loud, and I made her feel awful — I didn’t mean to make her feel that way.”Irresistible Allure, Harsh RealityBack up the I-70 corridor in Frisco, a sprawling Walmart parking lot often occupied by unhoused people living out of their cars and campers is tucked in front of a commercial complex with a high-end furniture store, a Whole Foods and a craft microbrewery.It’s one of the few places for the growing homeless population to go, since overnight parking is widely banned in Summit County, even in sparse hamlets like Blue River, perched just beyond Breckenridge above 10,000 feet.The effects of the global and national wealth parked in the Rockies often cascade downstream like the snow melt that carves the rivers. But it’s a force that can be identified in any direction.For many, if not most, homeowners in high-country counties like Summit, the hard truth is that only so much can be done if the very idea of mountain living — experiencing nature, removed from the bustling downhill hassles of the outside world — is to be maintained.“It’s funny, on our little block, there’s probably, you know, 10 homes — and on a beautiful day, which we have a lot of, you’ll see all of us standing out in our driveway, taking pictures,” said Ms. Best of Breckenridge’s community development department. “I must have the same picture 100 times because it’s so stunning when you go out there, and you’re still in awe of where we live. So I totally get the folks that want to be here.” More

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    New Union Leaders Take a Harder Line

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    Pushed by angry members, unions representing actors, autoworkers and UPS employees are becoming increasingly assertive under new leadership.Shawn Fain is not a typical president of the United Automobile Workers union.Mr. Fain recently declined a symbolic handshake with the chief executives of the major Detroit automakers, a gesture that traditionally kicks off contract negotiations. He is seeking an ambitious 40 percent wage increase for rank-and-file members — in line, he says, with the pay gains of those corporate leaders over the past four years. And in a video meeting with members last week, Mr. Fain threw a list of proposals from Stellantis, the maker of Chrysler and Jeep, into a wastebasket, saying it belonged in the trash “because that’s what it is.”On one level, the circumstances that produced the union’s more aggressive leadership are idiosyncratic. Mr. Fain, who won his position in March, is the first president in the union’s history, dating back nearly 90 years, to be elected directly by its members. The change took place after a major corruption scandal engulfed two of his predecessors and several more union officials.But on another level, the forces that swept Mr. Fain into power are the same ones that have borne down on unions across a variety of industries: a feeling among members that they have spent years enduring out-of-touch leaders, meager wage growth and concession-filled labor agreements, which forced some to do similar jobs as co-workers for less pay.“We kept being told, ‘This is a good contract,’” said Shana Shaw, a U.A.W. member who has worked at a General Motors plant in Missouri since 2008. “And our members are saying, ‘It’s not a good contract!’”The long-simmering rage helps explain why, in addition to Mr. Fain, several prominent unions are now in the hands of outspoken leaders who have taken their membership to the brink of high-stakes labor stoppages — or beyond.Sean O’Brien, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, has repeatedly referred to corporate leaders as a “white-collar crime syndicate” and warned that a strike of the union’s 300,000-plus United Parcel Service members appeared inevitable. (The union recently reached a tentative agreement that members are voting on.)Just after a union of more than 150,000 Hollywood actors called a strike in July, Fran Drescher, president of SAG-AFTRA, said that she was “shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us.” She added: “It is disgusting. Shame on them!”The companies, including UPS and the automakers, have indicated that they are willing to increase compensation but cannot jeopardize their long-term viability. The large Hollywood studios have offered actors pay increases but say they must be able to adapt to the decline of traditional television.Some executives have called out the unions’ more confrontational gestures. “The theatrics and personal insults will not help us reach an agreement,” Mark Stewart, a top Stellantis official, said in a letter to employees after Mr. Fain literally discarded the company’s proposals.And channeling members’ anger is not without risk: It can raise expectations and make it difficult for leaders to finalize contracts. Mr. O’Brien is facing a “vote no” campaign organized largely by UPS part-timers who argue that the union did not secure large enough raises.The populist approach is not unique to labor unions. The 2008 financial crisis and the grindingly slow recovery produced a more militant style of politics that upended established institutions around the world. The crisis helped lay the groundwork for the unexpected support of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential race.If anything, unions were slower to adapt to the rising anger than other institutions, largely because they were less democratic.In 2018, UPS employees voted down a labor contract negotiated by the Teamsters leadership, which created a new category of lower-paid drivers. The union’s president, James P. Hoffa, who had served in the position for nearly 20 years, used a procedural rule to impose the contract anyway.But even the change-averse labor movement could not withstand a final blow: Covid-19, and union members’ anger over their perilous working conditions as corporate profits grew at one of the fastest rates in decades.“There’s a historical memory of all the concessions they made,” said Ruth Milkman, a sociologist of labor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, referring to union members. “And they feel shafted. The C.E.O.s are sitting pretty with all this pandemic money that didn’t go into their pockets.”Many nonunion workers saw their wages rise rapidly thanks to a tight job market, but contracts negotiated before the pandemic often locked union members into smaller wage increases as inflation surged.Mr. O’Brien has tapped into that resentment.A vice president and ally of Mr. Hoffa in the mid-2010s, Mr. O’Brien ran to replace him in 2021, deriding his predecessor for foisting concessionary contracts onto members. He vowed to raise pay for part-timers at UPS — an unusual concern for a would-be Teamster president, even though part-timers make up a majority of the union’s members there — and secured a significant wage increase.Fran Drescher, center, president of SAG-AFTRA, came to channel her members’ anxiety over declining pay because of the rise of streaming.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesOther union leaders have followed a similar arc. In 2021, Ms. Drescher ran for president of SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union now on strike, on the union’s moderate slate and narrowly won. But she came to channel her members’ anxieties over the rise of streaming, which has led to longer gaps in work for many actors and more limited royalties as shows are reused less often.“The streaming contracts negotiated back at the beginning of this, when certain individuals thought this would be a fad, set us up for failure,” said Linsay Rousseau, a SAG-AFTRA member who works primarily as a voice actor. She said Ms. Drescher’s outspokenness had won over even members who voted against her.In some cases, outraged rank-and-filers have taken matters into their own hands. Edward Hall, a rail worker and local union official in Tucson, said he decided to run for the presidency of the more than 25,000-member Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen in early 2022. The union’s longtime president had arrived to hold a town-hall meeting about labor negotiations that had dragged on for over two years. But, Mr. Hall said, he was unable to provide frustrated members with a timetable for a deal. (Dennis Pierce, the former president, declined to comment.)Mr. Hall was elected last fall, shortly after Congress intervened to enact a labor agreement that members of several rail unions had voted down. Many workers felt the agreement did not go far enough to rein in a system of railroad operations that sought to minimize equipment and employees.“It was profitable for them,” Mr. Hall said, referring to rail carriers. “But for lack of a better way to put it, it made life on the railroad hell for regular employees.”The combination of agitated members and more assertive leaders can sometimes pry loose concessions from employers even without a strike, especially amid a worker shortage. This year, rail carriers began voluntarily addressing one of the workers’ biggest concerns: the lack of paid sick days.At UPS, Mr. O’Brien spent months preparing his members for a possible strike, even holding training sessions for strike captains and practice pickets. The pressure appeared to yield significant gains in the recent tentative agreement between the two sides, including more than $7 an hour in raises over the five years of the contract.In an interview last month, Mr. O’Brien said the Teamsters’ actions under his leadership had made the strike threat credible. “We’ve been striking since I took over,” said Mr. O’Brien, pointing to other companies where the union represents workers. David Pryzbylski, a labor lawyer at Barnes & Thornburg who represents employers, said the strident rhetoric of union leaders often reflected a genuine shift in workers’ attitudes. Still, he added, negotiations more often hinge on fundamentals like a company’s profitability and the union’s ability to disrupt operations through a strike, making it wise for employers to ignore the bluster.“A lot of times that stuff stops: They go out and say what they wanted to say, they send up a signal flare and move on,” Mr. Pryzbylski said. “If you start responding, it stays in the news cycle.”Sean O’Brien, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, in white, has repeatedly referred to corporate leaders as a “white-collar crime syndicate.”Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesThe full-throated demands can also backfire in economic terms. Yellow, a trucking company with 30,000 employees, declared bankruptcy several months after talks with the Teamsters broke down. The company’s chief executive said in a statement that the Teamsters’ intransigence drove Yellow out of business, though analysts note that the company showed signs of mismanagement for years.The risks may be even higher in industries under pressure to embrace a new business model.The major U.S. automakers have said that they need the ability to team up with nonunion battery manufacturers to secure additional capital and expertise. But Mr. Fain, the new U.A.W. president, has said that the failure to organize more battery workers was a major failure of his predecessors, and that battery workers must receive the same pay and working conditions that union workers enjoy at the Big Three.Many U.A.W. members say the tension between the automakers’ goals and the union’s indicates that a strike will be hard to avoid when their contract expires in mid-September. But they do not appear to be shrinking from that possibility.“We have an extremely well-oiled machine,” said Ms. Shaw, who also serves as a co-chair of the organizing committee of Unite All Workers for Democracy, a reform group within the union that assembled the slate of candidates Mr. Fain ran on. “We’ll be ready to go if happens.” More

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    Indiana Tests if the Heartland Can Transform Into a Chip Hub

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    Over the past 14 months, Indiana began converting 10,000 acres of corn and bean fields into an innovation park. State leaders met with the chief executives of semiconductor giants in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. And they hosted top Biden administration officials to show off a $100 million expansion of chip research and development facilities at a local university.The actions were driven by one main goal: to turn Indiana into a microchip manufacturing and research hub, almost from scratch.“We’ve never done anything at this scale,” said Brad Chambers, who was Indiana’s commerce secretary in charge of economic development. “It’s a multibillion-dollar commitment by the state to be ready for the transitions that are happening in our global economy.”“We’ve never done anything at this scale,” said Brad Chambers, Indiana’s commerce secretary.Kaiti Sullivan for The New York TimesIndiana’s moves are a test of the Biden administration’s efforts to stimulate regional economies through the $52 billion CHIPS and Science Act, a landmark package of funding that is planned to begin going out the door in the next few months. The program is intended to bolster domestic manufacturing and research of semiconductors, which act as the brains of computers and other products and have become central to the U.S. battle with China for tech primacy.The Biden administration has promised that the CHIPS Act will seed high-paying tech jobs and start-ups even in places with little foundation in the tech industry. In a speech in May last year, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who oversees the chips program, said she was looking at how the program would help “different places in the heartland of America.”She added, “I think we will really unleash an unbelievable torrent of entrepreneurship and capital opportunity.”Gina Raimondo, the U.S. secretary of commerce, is overseeing the CHIPS Act program. Jared Soares for The New York TimesThat makes Indiana a prime case study for whether the administration’s efforts will pan out. Unlike Arizona and Texas, which have long had chip-making plants, Indiana has little experience with the complicated manufacturing processes underlying the components, beyond electric vehicle battery manufacturing and some defense technology projects that involve semiconductors.Indiana now wants to catch up to other places that have landed big chip manufacturing plants. The push is supported by Senator Todd Young, a Republican from Indiana, who was a co-author on the CHIPS Act and has been a leading voice on increasing funds for tech hubs. Companies and universities in Indiana have applied for multiple CHIPS Act grants, with the aim of winning awards not only for chip manufacturing but also for research and development.Some economists said the Biden administration’s goals of turning farmland into advanced chip factories might be overly ambitious. It took decades for Silicon Valley and the Boston tech corridor to thrive. Those regions succeeded because of their strong academic research universities, big anchor companies, skilled workers and investors.Many other areas don’t have that combination of assets. Indiana has for decades faced a brain drain among some of its more educated young people who flock to larger cities for work, according to the Indiana Chamber of Commerce. Some industrial policy proponents see the investments as a way to reverse that exodus, as well as a broader trend toward deindustrialization that hollowed out communities in the Rust Belt.But it’s unclear whether the program can achieve such ambitious goals — or whether the Biden administration will judge it to be more effective to spread out investments around the country or concentrate them in a few key hubs.“Many pieces have to come together,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He added that the federal government’s plan to initially put $500 million into tech hubs was too small and estimated it would take $100 billion in government aid to create 10 sustainable tech hubs.Indiana does have some advantages. The state has ample land and water — which are necessary for large chip factories that use water to cool equipment and rinse silicon wafers — and it has relatively stable weather for the highly sensitive production process. It also has Purdue University, with an engineering school that has promised to turn out the technicians and researchers needed for chip production.Yet the state faces stiff competition. In January 2022, Indiana lost a bidding war to Ohio over plans by Intel, the big U.S. chip-maker, to build two factories valued at $20 billion.“We learned a lot of lessons,” Mr. Chambers said about the failure. The biggest, he said, was to have a more attractive package of land, infrastructure and work force programs ready to offer big chip companies.A year later, Indiana won a $1.8 billion investment from SkyWater, a Minneapolis-based chip-maker, to build a factory with 750 jobs adjacent to Purdue’s campus.SkyWater, a Minneapolis-based chip maker, plans to invest $1.8 billion in a factory in Indiana. SkyWaterIndiana beat out four other states vying for SkyWater’s chip facility.SkyWaterState leaders acknowledge that any tech transformation could take years, especially if there is no anchor plant by even larger chip manufacturers such as TSMC, the world’s biggest maker of cutting-edge chips.Mr. Young said he and other state leaders were in talks with big chip makers for a contract that would compare to the $20 billion that Intel committed to Ohio. But “all net new job creation in my lifetime has been created by new firms and young firms,” he said.Indiana’s chip-making metamorphosis is now centered on a tech park, LEAP Innovation District, in the town of Lebanon near Interstate 65, which connects Indianapolis and Purdue in West Lafayette. The town is surrounded by 15,000 square miles of corn and bean farms.The park began taking shape along with the CHIPS Act. In 2019, Mr. Young was a co-author of the Endless Frontier Act with Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat of New York and then the Senate minority leader. The bill was the precursor to the CHIPS Act.As the bill wound through Congress, Mr. Young was in regular contact with Eric Holcomb, Indiana’s governor, and Mitch Daniels, then Purdue’s president, on details of the proposal. Mr. Young said Indiana’s manufacturing roots would be its asset, if the state’s factory sector could transition to making advanced chips.“I realized that Indiana and, more broadly, the heartland stood to disproportionately benefit from the investments that we would be making,” he said in an interview last month.Mr. Holcomb and Mr. Chambers then created a plan for a tech manufacturing park. Within months, they began buying corn and bean farms in Lebanon for what became the LEAP Innovation District.In September, Ms. Raimondo and Secretary of State Antony Blinken toured Purdue University’s clean rooms, seen here, for chip research.Kaiti Sullivan for The New York TimesPurdue is also working on a $100 million expansion of semiconductor research and development.Kaiti Sullivan for The New York TimesIn May 2022, Mr. Holcomb unveiled LEAP and began installing new water and power lines and a new road there. Mr. Holcomb, Mr. Chambers and Mr. Young also traveled to more than a dozen countries to meet with the executives of chip companies like SK Hynix and TSMC. They offered cheap rent in the LEAP district, tax incentives, access to labs and researchers at Purdue, and training programs at the local Ivy Tech Community College.Some of the work paid off. When Indiana beat out four other states for SkyWater’s $1.8 billion chip facility, the company said it was impressed by the coordination between state leaders and Purdue’s new president, Mung Chiang, who launched the nation’s first semiconductor degree programs to nurture workers for chip makers.Mung Chiang, Purdue University’s president, has rolled out a semiconductor degree program to nurture chip workers. Kaiti Sullivan for The New York TimesIn September, Mr. Chiang invited Ms. Raimondo and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to tour Purdue’s clean rooms for chip research and to see plans for a $100 million expansion of semiconductor research and development, including 50 new faculty to work on advanced chip science.“I think you have all the ingredients,” Ms. Raimondo said in a discussion with Mr. Holcomb and Mr. Chiang during the visit. Indiana officials now await word on how much CHIPS Act funding they may get. Some early results from the LEAP district initiative offer a mixed picture of where things might go.In May 2022, the park landed its first tenant — Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical company, not a chip maker. More