Labor shortage issues top Business Council’s legislative agenda
The Iowa Business Council on Thursday released its agenda for the 2022 legislative session, focusing on issues IBC leaders say will help address the state’s ongoing labor shortage.
“We are facing the most acute worker shortage in a generation,” Business Council Chair Tim Yaggi said. “Now is the time to make Iowa a national leader by acting on core issues that prevent people from participating in our economy.”Those core issues are child care, competitive tax policy, workforce development and housing.
“We look forward to working with both the General Assembly and the governor to advance these priority areas and ensure Iowa remains a competitive place to work, live and raise a family,” Yaggi said.
The Business Council is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization whose 22 members are the leaders and chief decision-makers of the state’s largest companies.
Joe Murphy, the group’s executive director, said the inability of companies to fill jobs because of the labor shortage will cause the Iowa economy to suffer.
“If we want employers to remain in our state, we must aggressively grow our population throughout Iowa,” he said. “Immigration should play an important role in our future workforce strategies.”
The overarching goal for the Business Council is workforce development, Murphy said, with child care, competitive tax policy and housing all falling under that effort.“At the end of the day, Iowa is in the middle of the worst worker shortage in a generation, so we really made a conscious effort to put forward policy proposals and initiatives that we think will have the greatest impact on the overall workforce issue,” he said.
He said tax reform is a critical issue to the workforce equation, and said policies that will make Iowa more competitive need to be approved.
Republican lawmakers have indicated they will prioritize reducing individual income tax rates but are open to conversations about the corporate tax rate. Murphy said that continuing work to lower the individual income tax rate should be part of a tax relief package, but that the Business Council will continue advocating for action on corporate taxes, too.
Updated rankings from the Tax Foundation on Thursday showed that while Iowa improved slightly, it still ranks in the bottom 12 for corporate and individual tax indexes.
“As we are trying to encourage people to stay in Iowa, to come to Iowa, one of the things we can help with is lowering that tax burden on individuals, particularly when they have options and opportunities to go to a lot warmer and sunnier locations with a lot lower taxes, especially in this remote world,” Murphy said.
He said more work is also needed on child care.
“We recognize the work the Legislature did last year to remove the child care cliff effect … and increasing child care tax credits, but as the governor’s Child Care Task Force report indicates, there’s significant policy areas that Iowa will continue to work on,” Murphy said.
Those include increasing and enhancing investment opportunities for employers, regulatory and financial barriers, and expanding eligibility for child care assistance, he said.
Iowa leads the nation in the number of homes where both parents work, all while losing 350,000 child care slots, making child care a critical issue for lawmakers and the business community, he said.
“Our labor participation rate has really fallen off, partly because of people retiring early, but also because more women are impacted on the child care citation and taking the opportunity to remove themselves from the labor force to care for their child,” Murphy said. “While we’ve made a lot of great progress, it’s important for us to understand we have a long way to go.”
Murphy said more work is also needed on housing in 2022.
“We continue to believe that housing will have a direct impact on the future economic well-being of Iowa,” he said. “We’re talking about housing for everybody. As we think about trying to grow the population of the state. … Housing really needs to be thought of as an economic development tool.”
Absent from the Business Council’s agenda this year is broadband expansion.
Murphy said with the approval of $100 million in 2021 for expanding high-speed internet and the influx of federal money from the infrastructure bill, the American Rescue Plan and the CARES Act, enough initial progress has been made on the issue that the Business Council wanted to elevate and focus on other issues in 2022.
“Obviously, we can and should be doing more in the years to come,” Murphy said. “It’s a huge endeavor, but we really feel good at the progress so far and where we are going.”
The Iowa Legislature is scheduled to convene on Monday, Jan. 10. Murphy and a panel of other business leaders will discuss their priorities for the upcoming legislative session during the Business Record’s 2022 Legislative Forecast, scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 11.
Trending News
