University of Utah student Rebeca Damico said her professors at first took a hard line against AI when ChatGPT was introduced in 2022, but she and other students say schools have softened their stands as the usefulness – and career potential – of the technology has become clearer. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for States Newsroom)

For 21-year-old Rebeca Damico, ChatGPT’s public release in 2022 during her sophomore year of college at the University of Utah felt like navigating a minefield.

The public relations student, now readying to graduate in the spring, said her professors immediately added policies to their syllabuses banning use of the chatbot, calling the generative artificial intelligence tool a form of plagiarism.

“For me, as someone who follows the rules, I was very scared,” Damico said. “I was like, oh, I can’t, you know, even think about using it, because they’ll know.”

Salt Lake City-based Damico studied journalism before switching her major to public relations, and saw ChatGPT and tools like it as a real threat to the writing industry. She also felt very aware of the “temptation” she and her classmates now had — suddenly a term paper that might take you all night to write could be done in a few minutes with the help of AI.

“I know people that started using it and would use it to … write their entire essays. I know people that got caught. I know people that didn’t,” Damico said. “Especially in these last couple weeks of the semester, it’s so easy to be like, ‘Oh, put it into ChatGPT,’ but then we’re like, if we do it once, it’s kind of like, this slippery slope.”

But students say they’re getting mixed messages – the stern warning from professors against use of AI and the growing pressure from the job market to learn how to master it.

The technological developments of generative AI over the last few years have cracked open a new industry, and a wealth of job opportunities. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced the first statewide partnership with a tech firm to bring AI curriculum, resources and opportunities to the state’s public colleges.

And even for those students not going into an IT role, it’s likely they will be asked to use AI in some way in their industries. Recent research from the World Economic Forum’s 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report found that 75% of people in the workforce are using AI at work, and that some hiring managers are equally prioritizing AI skills with real-world job experience.

Higher ed’s view of AI

Over the last few years, the University of Utah, like most academic institutions, has had to take a position on AI. As Damico experienced, the university added AI guidelines to its student handbook that take a fairly hard stance against the tools.

It urges professors to add additional AI detection tools in addition to education platform Canvas’ Turnitin feature, which scans assignments for plagiarism. The guidelines also now define the use of AI tools without citation, documentation or authorization as forms of cheating.

Though Damico said some professors continue to hold a hard line against AI, some have started to embrace it. The case-by-case basis Damico describes from her professors is in line with how many academic institutions are handling the technology.

Some universities spell out college-wide rules, while others leave it up to professors themselves to set AI standards in their classrooms. Others, like Stanford University’s policy, acknowledge that students are likely to interact with it.

Stanford bans AI from being used to “substantially complete an assignment or exam,” and says students must disclose its use, but says “absent a clear statement from a course instructor, use of or consultation with generative AI shall be treated analogously to assistance from another person.”

Virginia Byrne is an associate professor of higher education and student affairs at Morgan State University in Baltimore, and she studies technology in the lives of learners and educators, with a focus on how it impacts college students. She said the university allows professors to figure out what works best for them when it comes to AI. She herself often assigns projects that prompt students to investigate the strengths and weaknesses of popular AI tools.

She’s also a researcher with the TRAILS Institute, an multi-institution organization aiming to understand what trust in AI looks like, and how to create ethical, sustainable AI solutions. Along with Morgan State, researchers from University of Maryland, George Washington University and Cornell University conduct a variety of research, such as how ChatGPT can be used in health decision making, how to create watermark technology for AI or how other countries are shaping AI policy.

“It’s cool to be in a space with people doing research that’s related, but so different,” Byrne said. “Because it expands your thinking, and it allows us to bring graduate students and undergraduate students into this community where everyone is focused on trustworthiness and AI, but from so many different lenses.”

Byrne hopes that her students can see the potential that AI has to make their lives and work more easy, but she worries that it creates an “artificial expectation” for how young people need to perform online.

“It might lead some folks, younger folks, who are just starting their careers, to feel like they need to use (social media tool) Canva to look totally perfect on LinkedIn, and use all these tools to … optimize their time and their calendars,” Byrne said. “And I just worry that it’s creating a false expectation of speed and efficiency that the tools currently can’t accomplish.”

Theresa Fesinstine is the founder of peoplepower.ai, which trains HR professionals on ways AI can be used efficiently within their organization. This semester, she instructed her first college course at the City University of New York on AI and business, and taught students of all years and backgrounds.

Fesinstine said she was surprised how many of her students knew little to nothing about AI, but heard that many other instructors warned they’d fail students who were found to have used it in assignments. She thinks this mixed messaging often comes from not understanding the technology, and its abilities to help with an outline, or to find research resources.

“It’s a little scary, and I think that’s where, right now, most of the trepidation is centered around,” she said. “It’s that most people, in my opinion, haven’t been trained or understand how to use AI most effectively, meaning they use it in the same way that you would use Google.”

Real-world applications

Shriya Boppana, a 25-year-old MBA student at Duke University, not only uses AI in her day-to-day life for schoolwork, but she’s also pursuing a career in generative AI development and acquisitions. She wasn’t initially interested in AI, she said, but she worked on a project with Google and realized how the technology was set to influence everyday life, and how malleable it still is.

“Once you kind of realize how much that the tech actually isn’t as fleshed out as you think it is, I was a little more interested in … trying to understand what the path is to get it where it needs to go,” Boppana said.

She said she uses some form of AI tool every day, from planning her own schedule, to having a chatbot help decide how students in a group project should divide and complete work, based on their availability. Because she works with it regularly, she understands the strengths and limitations of AI, saying it helps her get mundane tasks done, process data or outline an assignment.

But she said the personalized tone she aims to have in her writing just isn’t there yet with the publicly available AI tools, so she doesn’t completely rely on it for papers or correspondence.

Parris Haynes, a 22-year-old junior studying philosophy at Morgan State, said the structure and high demand of some students’ coursework almost “encourages or incentivizes” them to use AI to help get it all done.

He sees himself either going into law, or academia and said he’s a little nervous about how AI is changing those industries. Though he leans on AI to help organize thoughts or assignments for classes like chemistry, Haynes said he wouldn’t go near it when it comes to his work or career-related objectives for his philosophy classes.

“I don’t really see much of a space for AI to relieve me of the burden of any academic assignments or potential career tasks in regards to philosophy,” Haynes said. “Even if it could write a convincing human-seeming paper, a philosophical paper, it’s robbing me of the joy of doing it.”

Gen Z’s outlook on their future with AI 

Like Haynes, Fesinstine knows that some of her students are interested, but a little scared about the power AI may have over their futures. Although there’s a lot of research about how older generations’ jobs are impacted by AI, those just about to break into the workforce may be the most affected, because they’ve grown up with these technologies.

“I would say the attitude is — I use this term a lot, ‘cautiously curious,’” Fesinstine said.  “You know, there’s definitely a vibe around ethics and protection that I don’t know that I would see in other generations, perhaps … But there’s also an acknowledgement that this is something that a lot of companies are going to need and are going to want to use.”

Now, two years since ChatGPT’s release, Damico has started to realize the ways generative AI is useful in the workplace. She began working with PR firm Kronus Communications earlier this year, and was encouraged to explore some time-saving or brainstorming functions of generative AI.

She’s become a fan of having ChatGPT explain new business concepts to her, or to get it to suggest Instagram captions. She also likes to use it for more refined answers than Google might provide, such as if she’s searching for publications to pitch a client to.

Though she’s still cautious, and won’t use generative AI to write actual assignments for her, Damico said she realizes she needs the knowledge and experience after graduation — “it gives you kind of this edge.”

Boppana, who sees her career growing in the AI space, feels incredibly optimistic about the role AI will play in her future. She knows she’s more knowledgeable and prepared to go into an AI-centered workforce than most, but she feels like the opportunities for growth in healthcare, telecommunications, computing and more are worth wading into uncertain waters.

“I think it’s like a beautiful opportunity for people to learn how machines just interact with the human world, and how we can, I don’t know, make, like, prosthetic limbs, like test artificial hearts … find hearing aids,” Boppana said. “There’s so much beauty in the way that AI helps human beings. I think you just have to find your space within it.”

The Vista Sands Solar Project will be built on more than 6,000 acres in Portage County.

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The ACRE program — a collaboration among UW-Milwaukee, the Milwaukee School of Engineering and Marquette University — nurtures professionals of color in the commercial real estate market. A recent Wisconsin Policy Forum analysis finds that their efforts are working.

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Kenosha County Executive Samantha Kerkman shares her thoughts on Eli Lilly's expansion in the region.

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Tech insiders say Biden is leaving a strong foundation for high-tech industry, boosting broadband access, setting a foundation for AI regulation, and encouraging chip manufacturing. (Rebecca Noble | Getty Images)

As he’s poised to leave office in two months, President Joe Biden will leave a legacy of “proactive,” “nuanced” and “effective” tech policy strategy behind him, technologists across different sectors told States Newsroom.

Biden’s term was bookended by major issues in the tech world. When he took office in early 2021, he was faced with an economy and workforce that was struggling to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, and longstanding issues with a digital divide across the country. As he prepares to exit the White House, federal agencies are working to incorporate the principles from the 2023 AI Bill of Rights, on evolving technologies that will undoubtedly continue changing American life.

Though he was unable to get federal regulations on AI passed through Congress, Biden’s goal was to bring tech access to all Americans, while safeguarding against potential harms, the technologists said.

“I think everything that he does is foundational,” said Suriel Arellano, a longtime consultant and author on digital transformation who’s based in Los Angeles. “So it definitely sets the stage for long term innovation and regulation.”

The digital divide 

For Arellano, Biden’s attempt to bring internet access to all families stands out as a lasting piece of the president’s legacy. Broadband internet for work, healthcare and education was a part of Biden’s 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal, especially targeting people in rural areas.

Biden earmarked $65 billion toward the project, which was dolled out to states and federal departments to establish or improve the physical infrastructure to support internet access. As of September, more than 2.4 million previously unserved homes and businesses have been connected to the internet, and $50 billion has been given to grant programs that support these goals across the states.

Arellano said he thinks there’s still work to do with the physical broadband infrastructure before that promise is realized — “I think that should have come first,” he said.

“But I think as a legacy, I think breaching the digital divide is actually one of the strong — maybe not the strongest, but I would say it’s definitely a strong legacy that he leaves,” Arellano said.

Shaping the U.S. conversation about AI

During Biden’s presidency, practical and responsible application of artificial intelligence became a major part of the tech conversation. The 2023 AI Bill of Rights created the White House AI Council, the creation of a framework for federal agencies to follow relating to privacy protection and a list of guidelines for securing AI workers, for navigating the effects on the labor market and for ensuring equity in AI use, among others.

The guidelines put forth by the administration are subtle, and “not likely to be felt by the average consumer,” said Austin-based Alex Shahrestani, an attorney and managing partner at Promise Legal, which specializes in tech and regulatory policy.

“It was something that’s very light touch and essentially sets up the groundwork to introduce a regulatory framework for AI providers without it being something that they’re really going to push back on,” Shahrestani said.

In recent months, some federal agencies have released their guidelines called for by the AI Bill of Rights, including the Department of Labor, and The Office of Management and Budget, which outlines how the government will go about “responsible acquisition” of AI. It may not seem like these guidelines would affect the average consumer, Shahrestani said, but government contractors are likely to be larger companies that already have a significant commercial footprint.

“It sets up these companies to then follow these procedures in other contexts, so whether that’s B2B or direct-to-consumer applications, that’s like more of a trickle down sort of approach,” he said.

Sheena Franklin, D.C.-based founder of K’ept Health and previously a lobbyist, said Biden emphasized the ethical use and development of AI, and set a tone of fostering public trust and preventing harm with the AI Bill of Rights.

Franklin and Shahrestani agreed it’s possible that President-elect Donald Trump could repeal some of Biden’s executive orders on AI, but they see the Bill of Rights as a fairly light approach to regulating it.

“It was a really nuanced and effective approach,” Shahrestani said. “There’s some inertia building, right? Like a snowball rolling down the hill. We’re early days for the snowball, but it just got started and it will only grow to be a bigger one.”

The CHIPS act

Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which aimed to strengthen domestic semiconductor manufacturing, supply chains and the innovation economy with a $53 billion investment, is a major piece of his legacy, Franklin said. The bill centered on worker and community investments, and prioritized small businesses and underrepresented communities, with a goal of economic growth in the U.S., and especially in communities that needed support.

Two years after the bill was signed, the federal government, in partnership with American companies, has provided funding for semiconductor manufacturing projects that created more than 100,000 jobs and workforce development programs. The U.S. is on track to produce 30% of the world’s semiconductor chips in 2032, up from 10% today.

“He was really trying to position the U.S. as a global leader when it came to technology, because that industry is going to continue to grow,” Franklin said.

It’s hard to quantify what the lasting impact of the CHIPS act will be, but one immediate factor is computing, Shahrestani said. The AI models being developed right now have infinite abilities, he said, but the computing power had previously held the industry back.

“Being able to provide more compute through better chips, and more sophisticated hardware is going to be a big part of what provides, and what is behind the best AI technologies,” Shahrestani said.

Accountability for Big Tech

Many in the Big Tech community see Biden’s AI Bill of Rights, and its data privacy inclusions, as well as the Justice Department’s monopoly lawsuits against tech giants like Apple and Google, as hampering innovation.

Arellano is optimistic about the technological advances and innovation that the U.S. may see under a less regulation-focused Trump presidency, but he cautions that some regulations may be needed for privacy protections.

“My concern is always on the public side, you know, putting the dog on a leash, and making sure that our regulations are there in place to protect the people,” he said.

Franklin predicts that if Biden attempts any last-minute tech policy before he leaves office, it will probably be to pursue further antitrust cases. It would align with his goal of fostering competition between startups and small businesses and reinforce his legacy of safeguarding consumer interests, she said.

When she considered how to describe Biden’s tech legacy, Franklin said she nearly used the word “strength,” though she said he ultimately could have done a little bit more for tech regulation. But she landed on two words: “thoughtful and proactive.”

“Meaning, he’s thinking about everybody’s concerns,” Franklin said. “Not just thinking about the Big Tech and not just thinking about the consumers, right? Like there has to be a balance there.”

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Service workers at Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee are trying to form a union, the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization announced Monday.

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Employees work at a Rivian electric vehicle factory in Normal, Ill., in 2021. A historic recovery in manufacturing jobs between 2019 and 2023 was concentrated in small urban areas such as McLean County, where Normal is located, and where car and candy factories have added jobs. (Courtesy of Rivian)

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, McLean County, Illinois, was known mostly as the home of State Farm Insurance in Bloomington and Illinois State University in Normal.

Now, the area illustrates a trend that’s bringing more factories to small cities with lower costs of living: It has thousands of new jobs manufacturing Rivian electric vehicles and a new candy factory that will produce Kinder Bueno and other Ferrero candies.

“Food and electric cars. This is not something we were known for before 2019,” said Patrick Hoban, president of Bloomington-Normal Economic Development Council in McLean County.

“We’re primarily an insurance and university town that’s just now seeing a rise in manufacturing. Rivian has ramped up from 300 to 8,000 employees, and I don’t think anyone realized how fast that was going to happen,” Hoban said.

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to rebuild American manufacturing, and he won handily in most areas hollowed out by the movement of factory jobs overseas. But the rebound Trump promises has already been underway in many places: McLean County is part of an unusually strong jump in manufacturing jobs between 2019 and 2023 — the first time manufacturing employment has recovered fully from a recession since the 1970s, according to a recent report from the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan public policy organization in Washington, D.C.

There were about 12.9 million manufacturing jobs in 2023, slightly more than in 2019. However, the number of manufacturing jobs has declined precipitously since the all-time peak in 1979, when there were 19.4 million of them and they were a much larger share of overall employment.

Joseph McCartin, a Georgetown University professor and labor history expert, said manufacturing has been on an upswing since 2010 as the nation started recovering from the Great Recession. The pandemic interrupted the trajectory, but the United States recently saw a hopeful increase in pay for the new jobs, he said, as the Biden administration aimed to increase both wages and jobs through the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.

“The Biden administration tried to use policy to ensure that more of these would be union jobs or at least offer union-level wages,” McCartin said. “This approach is almost certainly dead due to the results of the election.”

Employers may have a hard time filling lower-paying manufacturing jobs such as meat processing if the new Trump administration deports the immigrants who fill them, said William Jones, a University of Minnesota history professor and former president of the Labor and Working Class History Association.

“These will be hard hit if Trump follows up on his deportation plan,” Jones said. “The political rhetoric is that a bunch of native-born workers will move into these jobs, that they’re getting squeezed out, but that’s actually not the case. Some of these industries are extremely dependent on immigrant labor.”

Where growth happened

Small urban areas such as McLean County got most of the increase in manufacturing jobs between 2019 and 2023, according to the Economic Innovation Group report. Rural areas lost those jobs, and large cities saw no change.

It was mostly Sun Belt and Western states that saw the increases during those years, according to a Stateline analysis of federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The largest percentage changes in manufacturing jobs were in Nevada (up 14%), Utah (up 11%), and Arizona and Florida (each up 9%). The largest raw numbers of new manufacturing jobs were in Texas (up 48,200), Florida (up 35,100) and Georgia (up 22,900).

Southern states such as Alabama and Mississippi also have seen more automotive jobs as manufacturers have taken advantage of lower costs and state “right-to-work” laws that weaken unions. Vehicle manufacturing jumped by 7,800 in Alabama and 6,600 in Mississippi, the largest increases outside California.

Meanwhile, traditional Rust Belt states have seen continued declines, with manufacturing jobs down about 2% in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and also in Illinois — despite McLean County’s success.

Manufacturing is playing a critical role in Nevada as it tries to diversify its tourist-oriented economy so it can better weather downturns such as the one during the pandemic, said Steve Scheetz, research manager for the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development.

Automotive and other battery manufacturing and recycling, driven by electric carmaker Tesla and battery recycling firm Redwood Materials, account for much of the increase in Nevada manufacturing, Scheetz said.

As in Illinois, the job growth tended to be in smaller areas outside big cities, such as Storey County, just east of Reno, with a population of about 4,200.

“Fifteen years ago, this small county in rural Nevada was relatively unknown,” Scheetz said, adding that jobs and economic output has risen tenfold and the number of total jobs — including manufacturing — has grown from less than 4,000 to almost 16,000 in those 15 years. The county also is home to plants making building materials, industrial minerals and molded rubber, among other products.

The Biden administration focused on bringing more blue-collar jobs to small cities like Normal and Bloomington, said Jones, the University of Minnesota professor.

“Much of the growth is due to [President Joe] Biden’s manufacturing investments. There was a conscious strategy to focus on small towns to get the political benefit in places that tended to vote Republican,” said Jones.

If there was a play for political benefit, it got mixed results: Vice President Kamala Harris carried McLean County, Illinois, on Nov. 5, but she lost Storey County, Nevada, by the largest margin for a Democrat in 40 years.

Blue-collar wages

The decline of unions and the availability of cheaper labor overseas have dampened U.S. factory job wages in recent decades. Even so, manufacturing jobs remain an attractive path for blue-collar workers.

Manufacturing pay still ranks fairly high among the blue-collar fields at an average $34.42 per hour as of October — less than wages in energy ($39.98) or construction ($38.72), but considerably more than hospitality ($22.23) or retail ($24.76). That also was the case in 2019, and it has led many state and cities to seek more factory positions to balance out the lower-paying service jobs that have blossomed as manufacturing has waned.

But in the past year, state Republican leaders have pushed back on a burgeoning Southern labor movement that aims to bring higher wages and better benefits to blue-collar workers.

In Alabama, Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed a new law in May that would claw back state incentives from companies that voluntarily recognize labor unions. GOP leaders in Georgia and Tennessee also passed laws pushing against a reinvigorated labor movement, viewing unions as a threat to the states’ manufacturing economies.

Much of the increase in Alabama manufacturing jobs has been in the northern part of the state, near Tennessee and Georgia. Since the pandemic began, Mazda Toyota Manufacturing came on line with the goal of hiring 4,000 vehicle production workers and another 2,000 in nearby parts factories as other manufacturers also boosted hiring. Private investment in Alabama automotive manufacturing totaled $7 billion over the same time frame, Stefania Jones, a spokesperson for state Commerce Secretary Ellen McNair, said in a statement to Stateline.

Supply-chain problems during the pandemic illustrated the advantages of American-made goods, said McCartin, the Georgetown University professor. However, without union support, today’s factory workers are unlikely to achieve the middle-class lifestyle enjoyed by earlier generations, he said.

“The growth of manufacturing itself is unlikely to become a panacea for what ails working-class America,” McCartin said.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

Wisconsin unemployment remains low and the number of jobs in the state is near a record high, according to the state labor department. (Spencer Platt | Getty Images)

Unemployment in Wisconsin remained at a record-low rate in September while the number of jobs was still close to a record high, the state labor department reported Thursday.

The projected number of Wisconsinites employed in September topped 3,059,700 — a state record, according to the state Department of Workforce Development (DWD). The department reported that September was the fifth month in a row that the state employment number reached a new record high.

The unemployment rate for the month remained at 2.9%, according to DWD. Employment numbers are projections drawn from a federal survey of households.

Based on that survey, DWD projected the number of unemployed people in September was about 90,100.

“It’s been tracking around historic lows for quite some time, and we don’t see that, short of a major recession, to increase any time soon,” said Dennis Winters, DWD’s chief economist, at a media briefing Thursday on the September jobs report. “And we don’t have any visions of a recession on the horizon anywhere at this point.”

From a separate federal survey of employers, the projected number of jobs in Wisconsin was off slightly in September compared to August, but still a robust 3.04 million — nearly 31,000 more jobs than in September 2023.

Unemployment insurance claims also remained close to their lowest level, while ticking up slightly, Winters said. The slight increase corresponds to typical seasonal trends in the last part of the year, he added.

Unemployment claims are reported from DWD, which manages Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance system. They are distinct from the federal survey’s unemployment numbers.

The high state employment numbers, low unemployment numbers and low numbers of unemployment insurance claims all suggest that when workers do lose their jobs, they are able to find employment again quickly, so “for the most part you’re not going to be laid off for very long,” Winters said.

The statewide numbers released Thursday don’t include  local or regional data, which DWD publishes later in the month.

A September report produced by the Wisconsin Policy Forum found that while Wisconsin had a strong recovery from the brief 2020 recession sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic, the results have been uneven and in more than half of Wisconsin counties, employment remains behind 2019.

Rivian Electric Delivery Vehicles (EDV) are seen connected to electric chargers during a launch event between Amazon and Rivian at an Amazon facility on July 21, 2022, in Chicago, Illinois. (Mustafa Hussain | Getty Images)

This is one in a series of States Newsroom reports on the major policy issues in the presidential race.

Highlighted in Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign as one of the major crises facing the country, climate change has received much less attention in the 2024 race for the presidency.

The candidates, Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, share the twin goals of lowering energy costs and increasing U.S. jobs in the sector, but diverge widely in their plans to get there.

On the campaign trail, each has spent relatively little time detailing their own plans, instead criticizing the other as extreme.

Harris favors an expansion of renewable energy, which supplies power without the carbon emissions that are the primary driver of climate change.

She has touted her tie-breaking vote in the U.S. Senate to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, the broad domestic policy law Democrats pushed through along party lines that includes hundreds of millions in clean-energy tax credits.

Trump supports fossil fuel production, blaming policies to support renewable energy for rising energy prices. He has called for removing prohibitions on new oil and gas exploration to increase the supply of cheap fuel and reduce costs.

Promise: Promote fossil fuels

Both candidates promise to lower the cost of energy.

For Trump, that has involved hammering the Biden-Harris administration for encouraging renewable energy production.

Inflation was caused by “stupid spending for the Green New Deal, which was a green new scam, it turned out,” Trump said at a Sept. 26 press conference. “Do you notice that they never mention anything about environment anymore? What happened to the environment?”

The former president said at a Sept. 25 campaign stop he would “cut your energy [costs] in half,” by reducing regulations and cutting taxes.

He has not produced a detailed plan to achieve that goal.

Implicit in Trump’s argument is that the Biden administration’s focus on renewable energy has hampered oil and gas production, limiting supply and driving up prices.

But Harris has presented her support for renewable energy modes as part of a broader portfolio that includes fossil fuels.

Harris has highlighted the Inflation Reduction Act opened up new leases for oil and gas production while providing incentives for wind and solar power.

“I am proud that as vice president over the last four years, we have invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy while we have also increased domestic gas production to historic levels,” she said at a Sept. 10 ABC News debate with Trump.

A report this month from the U.S. Energy Information Administration showed that U.S. fossil fuel production reached an all-time high in 2023.

Promise: Promote renewables

Harris has also pointed to provisions of the IRA that provide consumers with tax benefits for green technology, such as home heat pumps, as a way to bring down costs.

“Thanks to tax credits on home energy technologies in the Inflation Reduction Act, more than 3.4 million American families saved $8.4 billion in 2023,” her campaign’s 82-page economic plan reads.

Trump also says he supports some climate-conscious technology, including megadonor Elon Musk’s Tesla brand of electric vehicles, but that Democrats have overinvested in non-fossil fuels.

He has called elements of the Inflation Reduction Act “giveaways,” and has singled out spending on electric vehicle charging infrastructure as wasteful.

Promise: Restore jobs

Biden has long talked about a transition away from fossil fuels as a benefit to U.S. workers, positioning them on the cutting edge of a growing industry.

Harris has similarly framed the issue in economic terms, saying the Inflation Reduction Act and other climate policies have created jobs.

“We have created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs while I have been vice president,” she said at the Sept. 10 debate. “We have invested in clean energy to the point that we are opening up factories around the world.”

At a campaign stop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, this month, Harris said Trump’s focus on fossil fuels would hamper job growth, saying he would “send thousands of good-paying clean energy jobs overseas.”

Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, have said Democrats’ focus on renewable energy sources has limited existing energy jobs.

“We’ve got great energy workers in Ohio and all across our country,” Vance said at an August campaign stop in his home state. “They want to earn a reasonable wage and they want to power the American economy. Why don’t we have a president that lets them do exactly that?

“Unleash American energy,” he said. “Drill, baby, drill and let’s turn the page on this craziness.”

Promise: Repeal Democrats’ climate law

Trump has had harsh words for Democrats’ climate law, blaming its spending for rising inflation.

“To further defeat inflation, my plan will terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam. Greatest scam in history, probably,” he told the Economic Club of New York in a Sept. 5 speech.

He said as president he would redirect any unspent funds in the law.

Trump has sought to distance himself from the policy blueprint Project 2025, written by the Heritage Institute.

But there is some overlap between what the conservative think tank has laid out and what Trump said he plans to do in a second term in the White House.

Project 2025 calls for repealing the Inflation Reduction Act, describing it as a subsidy to special interests.

Harris often mentions her tie-breaking vote for the law and has described her plans as president to expand on the law’s objectives.

Harris’ policy plan said she “proudly cast” the tie-breaking vote for the climate bill and that, as president, she would “continue to invest in a thriving clean energy economy.”

She added she would seek to improve that spending by cutting regulations “so that clean energy projects are completed quickly and efficiently in a manner that protects our environment and public health.”

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Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

Yes.

The United States netted 51 million new jobs since 1989. Accounting for gains and losses, Democrats held the presidency for 50 million of those.

The claim was made by former President Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention.

In the 35 years since 1989, Democrats served for 19 years (Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden) and Republicans for 16 years (George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Donald Trump).

The Economist previously reported 49 million of the 50 million net jobs added between January 1989 and February 2024 were created under Democrats.

“Many things feed into growth trends that have only a scant connection to whoever is living in the White House — from the business cycle to tech innovations and Federal Reserve decisions to the global economy,” The Economist said.

For example, COVID in 2020 caused massive job losses under Trump that erased earlier gains. The rebound happened mostly under Biden.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

USA TODAY: Full speech: Bill Clinton speaks at 2024 DNC | USA TODAY

Library of Congress: Chronological List of Presidents, First Spouses, and Vice Presidents of the United States

New York Times: D.N.C. Live Updates: Night 3 Will Give Tim Walz the Biggest Stage of His Life

Google Docs: Federal Reserve Bank employment counts

NBC News: DNC 2024 live updates: Watch Tim Walz, Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey and Nancy Pelosi speak tonight

The Economist: Five charts compare Democrats and Republicans on job creation

Were 50 million of the 51 million net US jobs created since 1989 created during Democratic presidencies? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.