Can Biden Economic Policy Help Those Left Behind?: Claudia Sahm

The stakes are high for President Joe Biden’s trifecta of investment packages: the Infrastructure and Jobs Act, the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. If implemented well, they have the potential to rejuvenate the left-behind parts of America.

Place-based inequities in the US are dramatic and costly. Nationally, the unemployment rate has held near historic lows of 3.5% for more than a year. But unemployment is far higher in several parts of the US, many of them rural, such as Yuma County in Arizona (15%) or Rolette County in North Dakota (10.5%). And when a region is ...