The U.S. economy is in a strange place right now. Job growth is slowing, but demand for workers is strong. Inflation is high (but not as high as last spring). Consumers are spending more in some areas, but cutting back in others. Job openings are high but falling, while layoffs are low and … well, […] More
The labor market appears hot, but the share of people who are either working or actively looking for a job still hasn’t quite recovered.As the United States emerges from the pandemic, employers have been desperate to hire. But while demand for goods and services has rebounded, the supply of labor has fallen short, holding back the economy.More than two years after the Covid-19 recession officially ended, some sectors haven’t found the workers they need to operate at capacity. Only in August did the work force return to its prepandemic size, which is millions short of where it would have been had it continued to grow at its prepandemic rate.In simple numbers, some of that gap is due to Covid’s death toll: more than a million people, about 260,000 of them short of retirement age. In addition, a sharp slowdown in legal immigration has pared the potential work force by 3.2 million, relative to its trajectory before 2017, according to calculations by economists at J.P. Morgan.But the problem isn’t just that population growth has stalled. Even with an uptick in August, the share of Americans working or actively looking for work is 62.4 percent, compared with 63.4 percent in February 2020.“It’s my sense that the most important reason that the labor market feels so hot right now is that we have so many fewer people in it,” said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project, an economic policy center at the Brookings Institution. “Demand largely recovered, and we didn’t have the supply.”Unraveling the causes of that lingering reluctance is difficult, but it’s possible to identify a few major groups who are on the sidelines.People at retirement age, who had been staying in the work force longer as longevity increased before the pandemic, dropped out at disproportionate rates and haven’t returned. More puzzlingly, men in their prime working years, from 25 to 54, have retreated from the work force relative to February 2020, while women have bounced back. Magnifying those disparities are two crosscutting factors: the long-term health complications from Covid-19, and a lagging return for workers without college degrees.Older workers are lagging behind in returning to the work forcePercent change in labor force participation rate for each age group since before the pandemic More
Seemingly overnight, the tech industry flipped from aggressive growth, hiring sprees, lavish perks and boundless opportunity to layoffs, hiring freezes and doing more with less.Nora Hamada, a 35-year-old who works with recruiters who hire employees for tech companies, is trying to be optimistic. But the change upended her online business, Recruit Rise, which teaches people how to become recruiters and helps them find jobs.In June, after layoffs trickled through tech companies, Ms. Hamada stopped taking new customers and shifted her focus away from high-growth start-ups. “I had to do a 180,” she said. “It was an emotional roller coaster for sure.”Throughout the tech industry, professional hirers — the frontline soldiers in a decade-long war for tech talent — are reeling from a drastic change of fortune.For years during an extraordinary tech boom, recruiters were flush with work. As stock prices, valuations, salaries and growth soared, companies moved quickly to keep up with demand and beat competitors to the best talent. Amy Schultz, a recruiting lead at the design software start-up Canva, marveled on LinkedIn last year that there were more job postings for recruiters in tech — 364,970 — than for software engineers — 342,586.But this year, amid economic uncertainty, tech companies dialed back. Oracle, Tesla and Netflix laid off staff, as did Peloton, Shopify and Redfin. Meta, Google, Microsoft and Intel made plans to slow hiring or freeze it. Coinbase and Twitter rescinded job offers. And more than 580 start-ups laid off nearly 77,000 workers, according to Layoffs.fyi, a crowdsourced site that tracks layoffs.The pain was acute for recruiters. Robinhood, the stock trading app that was hiring so quickly last year that it acquired Binc, an 80-person recruiting firm, underwent two rounds of layoffs this year, cutting more than 1,000 employees.Now some recruiters are adapting from blindly filling open jobs, known as a “butts in seats” strategy, to having “more formative” conversations with companies about their values. Others are cutting their rates as much as 30 percent or taking consulting jobs, internships or part-time roles. At some companies, recruiters are being asked to make sales calls to fill their time.“Companies are being looked at pretty dramatically differently in the investor market or public market, and now they have to pretty quickly adapt,” said Nate Smith, chief executive of Lever, a provider of recruiting software.It is a confusing time for the job market. The unemployment rate remains low, and employees who outlasted the “Great Resignation” of the millions who quit their jobs during the pandemic became accustomed to demanding more flexibility around their schedules and remote working.Nora Hamada’s program for training recruiters, Recruit Rise, grew quickly after she started it last summer.Leah Nash for The New York TimesBut companies are using layoffs and the specter of a recession to assert more control. Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta, said he was fine with employees’ “self-selection” out of the company as he set a new, relentless pace of work. Some companies have asked employees to move to a headquarters city or leave, which observers say is an indirect way to trim head count without doing layoffs.Plenty of tech companies are still hiring. Many of them expect growth to bounce back, as it did for the tech industry a few months after the initial shock of the pandemic in 2020. But companies are also under pressure to turn a profit, and some are struggling to raise money. So even the best-performing firms are being more careful and taking longer to make offers. For now, recruiting is no longer a top priority.Recruiters know the industry is cyclical, said Bryce Rattner Keithley, founder of Great Team Partners, a talent advisory firm in the San Francisco Bay Area. There’s an expression about gumdrops — or “nice to have” hires — versus painkillers, who are employees that solve an acute problem, she said.“A lot of the gumdrops — that’s where you’re going to see impact,” she said. “You can’t buy as many toys or shiny things.”Ms. Hamada started Recruit Rise in July last year, when recruiting firms were so overbooked that companies had to call in favors for the privilege of their business. Her company aimed to help meet that demand by offering people — typically midcareer professionals — a nine-week training course in recruiting for technical roles.The program grew quickly, forging relationships with prominent venture capital firms and Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund, which helped funnel students from Ms. Hamada’s program into recruiting jobs at high-growth tech start-ups.In May, emails from companies wanting to hire her students started tapering off. The venture firms she worked with began publishing doom-and-gloom blog posts about cutbacks. Then the layoffs started.Ms. Hamada stopped offering new classes to focus on helping existing students find jobs. She scrambled to contact companies outside the tech industry that were hiring tech roles — like banks or retailers — as well as software development agencies and consulting groups.“It was a scary period,” she said.For Jordana Stein, the shift happened on May 19. Her start-up, Enrich, hosts recurring discussion groups for professionals. In recent years, the most popular one was focused on “winning the talent wars” by hiring quickly. Enrich’s virtual events typically filled up with a wait list. But that day, three people showed up, and they didn’t talk about hiring — they talked about layoffs.“All of a sudden, the needs changed,” Ms. Stein, 39, said. Enrich, based in San Francisco, created a new discussion group focused on employee morale during a downturn.Pitch, a software start-up based in Berlin, froze hiring for new roles in the spring. The company’s four recruiters suddenly had little to do, so Pitch directed them to take rotations on other teams, including sales and research.By keeping the recruiters on staff, Pitch will be ready to start growing quickly again if the market rebounds, said Nicholas Mills, the start-up’s president.“Recruiters have a lot of transferable skills,” he said.Lucille Lam, 38, has been a recruiter her entire career. But after her employer, the crypto security start-up Immunefi, slowed its recruiting efforts in the spring, she switched to work in human resources. Instead of managing job listings and sourcing recruits, she began setting up performance review systems and “accountability frameworks” for Immunefi’s employees.“My job morphed heavily,” she said.Ms. Lam said she appreciated the chance to learn new skills. “Now I understand how to do terminations,” she said. “In a market where nobody’s hiring, I’ll still have a valuable skill set.”Matt Turnbull, a co-founder of Turnbull Agency, said at least 15 recruiters had asked him for work in recent months because their networks had dried up. Some offered to charge 10 percent to 30 percent below their normal rates — something he had never seen since starting his agency, which operates from Los Angeles and France, seven years ago.“Many recruiters are desperate now,” he said.Those who are still working have it harder than before. Job candidates often get stuck in holding patterns with companies that have frozen budgets. Others see their offers suddenly rescinded, leading to difficult conversations.“I have to try to be as honest as possible without discouraging them,” Mr. Turnbull said. “That doesn’t make not being not wanted any easier.”At Recruit Rise, Ms. Hamada restarted classes to train recruiters in late August. Steering her students away from start-ups funded by venture capital has shown promise, even if some of them have started with internships or part-time work instead of a full-time gig.Ms. Hamada is hopeful about the new direction, but less so about the tech companies propped by venture capital funding. “They’re not looking that stable right now,” she said. More
Federal labor regulators on Tuesday proposed a rule that would make more companies legally liable for labor law violations committed by their contractors or franchisees.Under the proposal, which governs when a company is considered a so-called joint employer, the National Labor Relations Board could hold a company like McDonald’s liable if one of its franchisees fired workers who tried to unionize, even if the parent company exercised only indirect control over the workers. Indirect control can include requiring the franchisee to use software that locks in certain scheduling practices and setting limits on what the workers can be paid.Under the current approach, adopted in 2020, when the board had a majority of Republican appointees, the parent company could be held liable for such labor law violations only if it exerted direct control over the franchisee’s employees — such as directly determining their schedules and pay.The joint-employer rule also determines whether the parent company must bargain with employees of a contractor or franchisee if those employees unionize.Employees and unions generally prefer to bargain with the parent company and to hold it accountable for labor law violations because the parent typically has more power than the contractor or franchisee to change workplace policies and make concessions.“In an economy where employment relationships are increasingly complex, the board must ensure that its legal rules for deciding which employers should engage in collective bargaining serve the goals of the National Labor Relations Act,” Lauren McFerran, the chairwoman of the board, which has a Democratic majority, said in a statement.The legal threshold for triggering a joint-employer relationship under labor law has changed frequently in recent years, depending on the political composition of the labor board. In 2015, a board led by Democrats changed the standard from “direct and immediate” control to indirect control.As a result of that shift, parent companies could also be considered joint employers of workers hired by a contractor or franchisee if the parent had the right to control certain working conditions — like firing or disciplining workers — even if it didn’t act on that right.Under President Donald J. Trump, the board moved to undo that change. The Republican-led board not only restored the standard of direct and immediate control, it also required that the control exercised by the parent be “substantial,” making it even more difficult to deem a parent company a joint employer.The franchise business model has faced rising pressure. On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said he had signed a bill creating a council to regulate labor practices in the fast food industry. The council has the power to raise the minimum wage for the industry in California to $22 an hour next year, compared with a statewide minimum of $15.50, and to issue health and safety standards to protect workers.The fast food industry strongly opposed the measure, arguing that it would raise costs for employers and prices for consumers. More
The monthly employment report suggested that the Federal Reserve might be able to tame inflation without causing a recession.Monthly change in jobs More
Federal Reserve officials are likely to see the August jobs numbers as a sign their policies are working — though not that their job is done.Policymakers are closely parsing labor market data as they try to figure out how much underlying momentum the economy has and how much they need to raise interest rates to restrain growth and lower inflation.Fed officials have raised rates to a range of 2.25 to 2.5 percent in July from near zero in March, but they are still waiting for signs that those higher borrowing costs are cooling consumer spending and business expansions, lowering demand and giving supply a chance to catch up. So far, the evidence of a major slowdown has been spotty.In that context, the data released on Friday was encouraging. Job growth slowed, but not by so much that it suggested a recession was imminent. The unemployment rate rose, but mostly because more people joined the labor force, which should make it easier for companies to fill open positions. Wage growth slowed.“Overall there’s a lot to like if you’re a Fed official right now,” said Sarah House, an economist at Wells Fargo. “Hiring remains robust but on a more sustainable basis. Yes, unemployment was up, but it was for all the right reasons. We saw a surge in job seekers.”Still, Ms. House said, one good report will not convince the Fed that it is time to back off its efforts to tame inflation.Central bankers have been clear that they are carefully watching data on both employment and inflation — which is showing hopeful, but not yet conclusive, signs of slowing — as they decide how quickly to raise interest rates. Fed officials are contemplating an increase of either a half percentage point or three-quarters of a point at their meeting on Sept. 20-21.Higher interest rates work to counter inflation partly by weighing on the labor market. As businesses face steeper borrowing costs, they grow less and cut back on hiring. As job opportunities dwindle, competition for workers eases and wage growth slows — reining in consumer spending. As demand wanes, companies become less able to raise prices, lowering inflation.That process can push unemployment up and prove painful as people lose or struggle to find jobs. But Fed officials have argued that getting inflation under control is critical — and that delaying the tough choices now would only make the situation worse down the road. More
Demand for workers remained strong in July, a sign that the U.S. labor market remains vibrant even as the Federal Reserve tries to cool the economy by raising interest rates.Job openings ticked up to 11.2 million, the Labor Department reported on Tuesday as part of its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS.The survey included a large upward revision for openings in June, to 11 million from an estimated 10.7 million. The figure reached a record of more than 11.8 million in March.Substantial aid during the pandemic’s ups-and-downs has kept businesses of all sizes afloat and household finances relatively healthy, resulting in robust demand for a broad variety of goods and services. But the labor force is still smaller than it was before the pandemic, forcing employers to scramble to hire.Openings outnumber unemployed workers by a ratio of two to one.The largest increases in openings were in transportation, warehousing and utilities jobs. In a sign of continued recovery, postings surged in the arts, entertainment and recreation industries, which have greatly benefited from the easing of Covid-19 concerns and restrictions.The State of Jobs in the United StatesEmployment gains in July, which far surpassed expectations, show that the labor market is not slowing despite efforts by the Federal Reserve to cool the economy.July Jobs Report: U.S. employers added 528,000 jobs in the seventh month of the year. The unemployment rate was 3.5 percent, down from 3.6 percent in June.Black Employment: Black workers saw wages and employment rates go up in the wake of the pandemic. But as the Federal Reserve tries to tame inflation, those gains could be eroded.Slow Wage Growth: Pay has been rising rapidly for workers at the top and the bottom. But things haven’t been so positive for all professions, especially pharmacists.Care Worker Shortages: A lack of child care and elder care options is forcing some women to limit their hours or has sidelined them altogether, hurting their career prospects.Several prominent companies announced layoffs this summer. But both the overall rate and number of layoffs have been flat on a monthly basis, while the recently elevated rate of quitting declined only slightly in July, showing that workers remain able to leave jobs they find unsatisfying.There were some signs of weakness, however. The survey found that job openings decreased in durable-goods manufacturing by an estimated 47,000. Some economists say this is unsurprising after the intense consumer demand for goods at the beginning of the pandemic. But it may also be an early mark of tighter financial conditions as a result of the Fed’s bid to rein in price increases.Economists and bank analysts said the report made it likely that the Fed would remain aggressive in raising interest rates, as the central bank tries to weaken the labor market so that wage gains and consumer spending, which have slowed, will dip further in better alignment with the supply-constrained economy.“The job market remains surprisingly resilient to the Fed’s best efforts to cool it off,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “The Fed desperately wants job growth to slow and unemployment to stabilize, even rise a bit, to quell wage and price pressures.”The Labor Department’s employment report for July was unexpectedly strong, showing a gain of 528,000. Mr. Zandi said the “red hot” JOLTS data would put even greater focus on the August hiring data, due Friday.The demand for labor is particularly remarkable because, based on inflation-adjusted gross domestic product, the economy contracted slightly in the first half of the year. Despite higher prices, the raw amount of goods and services being exchanged remains considerable, fueling demand for labor.“Millions of Americans still can find employment or even trade up to a higher-paying position,” said Robert Frick, an economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. “We may be seeing a second wind for economic growth after high inflation and slowing job growth in the spring.”Some commentators say the data on openings may be somewhat overstated because businesses have little incentive to take down listings, even if the urgency of hiring has waned.And there are signs that the tide may be shifting. A survey of more than 100 chief financial officers by Deloitte, a consulting and financial advisory firm, showed that nearly all of them expected decreases in revenue, hiring and overall expansion in the coming year.Their growth expectations for wages and staffing declined. They expect annual wage growth to be 4.8 percent and personnel growth to be 2.6 percent — both down from 5.3 percent in the previous quarterly survey. The Fed is also making a mark in corporate financing, which can affect hiring capacity or decisions: Roughly one in 10 chief financial officers at public companies viewed debt financing as attractive, down from nine in 10 a year ago.Still, executives remained relatively confident about the prospects for their own businesses, a disconnect that mirrors how consumers have maintained a gloomy economic outlook across the board while people in most income brackets continue to spend at heightened levels. More
Hiding a thousand feet below the earth’s surface in this patch of northern Minnesota wetlands are ancient mineral deposits that some view as critical to fueling America’s clean energy future.Tim Gruber for The New York TimesA company called Talon Metals is drilling here around the clock, extracting samples of rock rich with nickel in a bid to become the country’s sole source of a material used to power zero-emission vehicles.But some locals are fighting the mine, for fear it could pollute their environment. The pushback hints at how difficult it may be to build an all-American supply chain that powers the country’s transition to electric vehicles.This Remote Mine Could Foretell the Future of America’s Electric Car IndustryTAMARACK, Minn. — In this isolated town of about 100 people, dozens of employees are at work for Talon Metals, drawing long cylinders of rock from deep in the earth and analyzing their contents. They liken their work to a game of Battleship — each hole drilled allows them to better map out where a massive and long-hidden mineral deposit is lurking below.The company is proposing to build an underground mine near Tamarack that would produce nickel, a highly sought-after mineral that is used to power electric vehicles. It would be a profitable venture for Talon, which has a contract to supply nickel for Tesla’s car batteries, and a step forward in the country’s race to develop domestic supply chains to feed the growing demand for electric vehicles.But mines that extract metal from sulfide ore, as this one would, have a poor environmental record in the United States, and an even more checkered footprint globally. While some in the area argue the mine could bring good jobs to a sparsely populated region, others are deeply fearful that it could spoil local lakes and streams that feed into the Mississippi River. There is also concern that it could endanger the livelihoods and culture of Ojibwe tribes whose members live just over a mile from Talon’s land and have gathered wild rice here for generations.Talon says it will invest heavily to design the world’s greenest and most responsible mine yet, one that they say “Joe Biden can love.” But some people in the community remain skeptical, including about the company’s promises to respect Indigenous rights, like the tribes’ authority over lands where their members hunt and gather food. Part of that mistrust stems from the fact that Talon’s minority partner, Rio Tinto, provoked outrage in 2020 by blowing up a 46,000-year-old system of Aboriginal caves in Australia in a search for iron ore.Kelly Applegate, the commissioner of natural resources for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, said he was “very concerned” about how the mine might damage the environment. “This again is an assault on Native culture, a disturbance of our way of being, another trauma that could potentially happen to our people,” he said.He described it as a “huge environmental justice issue” to mine local resources for electric cars that the tribe’s members would be unable to afford. Except for some wealthy homeowners who spend their summers around the lakes, the area is one of the poorest parts of Minnesota. Native Americans in Minnesota experience poverty at higher rates than any other racial or ethnic group in the state. Locals say the only Tesla for miles is Talon’s company car.“Talon and Rio Tinto will come and go — greatly enriched by their mining operation. But we, and the remnants of the Tamarack mine, will be here forever,” Mr. Applegate said.The project, which lies 50 miles west of Lake Superior, highlights some of the challenges that are emerging as the Biden administration tries to transition America to electric vehicles. The administration has said it wants to make the supply chains for batteries more resilient by sourcing minerals inside North America. But that desire could bring its own potential for environmental damage and infringement of the rights of Indigenous Americans. Much of the nation’s supply of battery materials is near tribal land.The world urgently needs to switch to cleaner cars to limit the global damage from climate change, many climate activists say. Last week, California approved a plan to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035.But current supply chains for electric vehicle batteries — and the batteries that would be needed for the electric grid that would charge that fleet of vehicles — rely on some adversarial and heavily polluting foreign nations. Much of the nickel that goes into car batteries is produced by strip mines that have decimated rainforests in Indonesia and the Philippines, releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide before being refined in Chinese factories powered by coal.Read More on Electric VehiclesBanning Gasoline Cars: California is leading the way in the push to electrify the nation’s car fleet with a plan to ban sales of new internal-combustion vehicles by 2035, but the rule will face several challenges.Inflation Reduction Act: The law extends tax incentives in an effort to steer more U.S. consumers toward electric cars. But new rules complicate the qualification process.Plug-In Hybrids: After falling behind all-electric cars, U.S. sales of plug-in hybrids have been surging. The high cost of electric cars and gasoline have given them an opening.Car Crashes: Tesla and other automakers capture data from their vehicles to operate their products. Experts say the collected information could also improve road safety.Another source of nickel is a massive mining operation north of the Arctic Circle in Norilsk, Russia, which has produced so much sulfur dioxide that a plume of the toxic gas is big enough to be seen from space. Other minerals used in electric vehicle batteries, such as lithium and cobalt, appear to have been mined or refined with the use of child or forced labor.With global demand for electric vehicles projected to grow sixfold by 2030, the dirty origins of this otherwise promising green industry have become a looming crisis. The Democrats’ new tax and climate bill devotes nearly $400 billion to clean energy initiatives over the next decade, including electric vehicle tax credits and financing for companies that manufacture clean cars in the United States.New domestic high-tech mines and factories could make this supply chain more secure, and potentially less damaging to the global environment. But skeptics say those facilities may still pose a risk to the air, soil and water that surrounds them, and spark a fierce debate about which communities might bear those costs.The project is near lakes and streams that feed into the Mississippi River, and where Ojibwe tribes have gathered wild rice for generations.The potential risks to plants and wildlife come from the sulfide ores; the ores, in which materials like copper and nickel are lodged, can leach out sulfuric acid and heavy metals. More than a dozen former copper mines in the United States are now Superfund sites, contaminated locations where taxpayers can end up on the hook for cleanup.In January, the Biden administration canceled leases for another copper-nickel mine near a Minnesota wilderness area, saying the Trump administration had improperly renewed them.Talon Metals insists that it will have no such problems. “We can produce the battery materials that are necessary for the energy transition and also protect the environment,” said Todd Malan, the company’s chief external affairs officer and head of climate strategy. “It’s not a choice.”The company is using high-tech equipment to map underground flows of water in the area and create a 3-D model of the ore, so it can mine “surgically” while leaving other parts of the earth undisturbed, Mr. Malan said. Talon is also promising to use technology that will safely store the mine’s toxic byproducts and do its mining far underground, in deep bedrock where groundwater doesn’t typically penetrate.Talon has teamed up with the United Steelworkers union on work force development. And Rio Tinto has won a $2.2 million Department of Energy grant to explore capturing carbon near the site, which may allow the mine to market its products as zero emission.“We can produce the battery materials that are necessary for the energy transition and also protect the environment,” said Todd Malan, the chief external affairs officer and head of climate strategy at Talon.In a statement, Talon said it was committed to “meaningful consultations with tribal sovereign governments and tribal people” and producing a mine plan that addressed their concerns, as well as working with tribal governments interested in economic benefit sharing.The company has held several informational meetings with tribal staff and members, but some tribal members say they still need far more details from Talon about its plans.If the mine comes online in 2026 as scheduled, it will be positioned to feed a hungry market. The United States currently has one operating nickel mine, in Michigan, but its resources will be exhausted by 2026.In Washington, a bipartisan consensus is growing that the country should reduce its reliance on risky overseas minerals. To limit global warming to the levels that advanced countries have agreed on, the International Energy Agency estimates, the world will need roughly 20 times as much nickel and cobalt by 2040 as it had in 2020 and 40 times as much lithium.Recycling could play a bigger role in supplying these materials by the end of the decade, and some new car batteries do not use any nickel. Yet nickel is still highly sought after for electric trucks and higher-end cars, because it increases a vehicle’s range.The infrastructure law passed last year devoted $7 billion to developing the domestic supply chain for critical minerals. The climate and tax law also sets ambitious thresholds for ensuring that electric vehicles that receive tax incentives are partly U.S.-made.Elisabeth Kachinske logged core samples containing nickel at Talon’s offices in Tamarack, Minn.Talon’s proposed mine could help Tesla meet those thresholds. Tesla gets its nickel from China, Australia, New Caledonia and Canada, and its chief executive, Elon Musk, has begged miners to produce more.Some environmental and left-leaning groups that have long been skeptical of domestic mining are adjusting those positions, arguing that resources are needed for the energy transition.Collin O’Mara, the chief executive of the National Wildlife Federation, said that there was a growing need for battery materials that were mined responsibly, and that Talon was promising to use state-of-the-art techniques to minimize the mine’s footprint.But he acknowledged that for local residents it would still take a leap of faith in new technologies and Talon’s ability to apply them. “There still isn’t an example of an existing mine that has had no impacts,” he said.The economic potential — and the environmental risks — may go far beyond a single mine. The entire region is home to deposits of nickel, copper and cobalt, which were formed 1.1 billion years ago from a volcano that spewed out miles of liquid magma.Talon has leased 31,000 acres of land in the area, covering an 11-mile geological feature deep under the swamp. The company has zealously drilled and examined the underground resources along one of those 11 miles, and discovered several other potential satellite deposits.Elizabeth Skinaway, a member of the Sandy Lake Band of Minnesota Chippewa, is especially concerned about damage to the wild rice, which she has gathered in lakes near the proposed mine for 43 years.In August, the company announced that it had also acquired land in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to explore for more nickel.Talon will start Minnesota’s environmental review process within a few months, and the company says it anticipates a straightforward review. But legal challenges for proposed mines can regularly stretch to a decade or more, and some living near the project say they will do what they can to fight the mine.Elizabeth Skinaway and her sister, Jean Skinaway-Lawrence, members of the Sandy Lake Band of Minnesota Chippewa, are especially concerned about damage to the wild rice, which Ms. Skinaway has been gathering in lakes several miles from the proposed mine for 43 years.Ms. Skinaway acknowledges the need to combat climate change, which also threatens the rice. But she sees little justice in using the same kind of profit-driven, extractive industry that she said had long plundered native lands and damaged the global environment.“The wild rice, the gift from the creator, that’s going to be gone, from the sulfide that’s going to leach into the river and the lakes,” she said. “It’s just a really scary thought.”“We were here first,” said her sister. “We should be heard.”The Talon drill site near Tamarack. More
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