One year ago, Employ America announced an expanded mission and reorganized policy agenda – a rebrand built around a hardheaded assessment of what it takes to achieve and sustain full employment in a turbulent world. Navigating an era defined by geopolitical shocks, commodity volatility, supply fragility, and policy implementation failings requires a broader, bolder toolkit. That toolkit must be aimed at full employment, and to be effective and sustainable, it must address related challenges in the process. Combating inflation, supporting supply-side resilience, accelerating investment and productivity, and renewing state capacity are complementary tasks, and ones that match our organization’s range of capabilities.

Those capabilities span the full arc of the policy process. We analyze labor market and macroeconomic data at high frequency and in granular detail. Our financial modeling and structuring capabilities ensure that our proposals can specify how a transaction would actually work: which statutory authorities apply, how the financing gets structured, and why the private sector would align their behavior with the intentions of policymakers. Our legal expertise runs through the legislative and administrative process, from drafting statutory text to the finer details of rulemaking and federal contracting. And we have built up subject matter knowledge in the sectors where supply-side risks tend to originate, with energy now as our deepest vertical.

In the year since, our organization has evolved in order to deliver on these goals. What follows is an update on where each of our most active programs stands. Some of this work is already visible in public; much of it is groundwork for what we will be publishing and pursuing in the second half of the year.

Full Employment Macro In 2026

We will always be committed to ensuring full employment is achieved and sustained, and we are pleased to see high employment with some renewed momentum in the labor market. As our regular analysis has highlighted, the labor market found its footing after the steep drop-off in job growth in 2025, and age-adjusted employment rates have stayed high. For all of the imperfections in the US economy, it is better to address them from a position of labor market strength.

Our high-frequency analysis – Core Cast inflation tracking, the Fedspeak Monitor, and our FOMC previews – was early to flag that inflation risks were coiling from a range of supply-side pressures, including the latent effects of tariffs, the fragilities in supply chains, and the bottlenecks posed by the AI boom. We moved our Fed call toward hikes ahead of both consensus and financial markets; the data and the Committee have since drifted in our direction. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz only amplified these underlying themes, and with the Fed now weighing hikes over cuts, inflation and the Fed are yet again the most direct threat to full employment.

The long-term prospects for the labor market also lie in the shadow of the AI boom. Fears of hyperautomation replacing all need for work are prevalent, but a recessionary “tech bust” after the boom has stronger historical analogues worth studying. In our view, this gloomy consensus is increasingly missing that full employment always hinges on policy conditions. No matter the shock the US economy faces, there are policies that can support the right kinds of labor demand – and labor supply – over time. Truly powerful technology enhances what workers are able to achieve in quality, in scale, and in scope, and we view the advent of artificial intelligence as no exception.

Our analytical agenda here is taking shape along several dimensions: the scale, composition, and financing of AI-related investment, and what the producers and end-users of the relevant capital goods can tell us about its durability; the parallels with the late-90s tech boom and early-00s bust, which remain the best empirical guide to how investment cycles interact with full employment over time; the energy and hardware bottlenecks that could constrain the boom or feed through to sustained electricity price inflation; and the occupational and wage dynamics that will determine how workers fare through a boom and a potential bust. To sharpen this work, we are convening an interdisciplinary discussion group of analysts, scholars, and practitioners to reason through risk scenarios and the policy interventions that best stabilize employment and the business cycle. We expect to share published analysis on these questions over the next twelve months.

Preventing Shortages & Inflation: Breakthroughs On The Strategic Resilience Reserve

Employ America has made substantial progress towards the realization of a Strategic Resilience Reserve in the United States. What started from our original work calling for more dynamic, symmetric, and production-stabilizing usage of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve authorities has now translated to a general fit-for-purpose institution that engages in commodity stockpiling, market infrastructure development, and market stabilization. First proposed by Employ America’s Arnab Datta and former Deputy National Security Adviser Daleep Singh back in spring of 2024, the Strategic Resilience Reserve has achieved bipartisan and bicameral support and hearing consideration in 2026 via the SECURE Minerals Act. This legislation, if enacted, could serve as a valuable stabilization mechanism and safeguard the US economy from commodity shocks that extend well beyond oil and refined petroleum products. If anything, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has only further highlighted the power of domestic and international stockpiles for managing market volatility, and it’s well past time for lawmakers to think about the next set of commodity shocks that may disrupt US economic stability. The conceptual framework behind the SRR – that the US should use reserves to build liquid, transparent markets ex-China – has also gained considerable traction. Most notably, the Trump administration’s bilateral critical minerals agreements with partner governments have included the goal of using “economic policy tools and coordinated investment to accelerate the development of diversified, liquid, and fair markets for critical minerals.” A recent member of the Trump administration communicated to us that that language was included as a direct result of our work.

Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Todd Young, and Representatives Rob Wittman and John Moolenaar introduced a bipartisan bill to create a Strategic Resilience Reserve. There are still many more milestones yet to achieve, but the progress here has come ahead of the schedule we set for ourselves. We look forward to sharing more in the coming quarters.

2026 also saw the Trump administration adopt proposals quite similar to past Employ America recommendations. The first is Project Vault, a government-lending-enabled critical minerals stockpile. In 2024, we proposed that a government agency lend capital to a special purpose vehicle, using intermediaries contracting to procure critical minerals. We held a roundtable that included bankers, traders, and producers with government officials. Project Vault is nearly identical in overall structure, and two of the intermediaries that attended our roundtable, Traxys and Hartree, were initial participants for Project Vault. The Trump administration also adopted our approach to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) following the disruption of crude oil supply through the Strait of Hormuz. Rather than a strict release from the SPR, the administration is utilizing the “exchange” authority whereby DOE releases from the reserve but recipients contract to return the same number of barrels, plus a premium, at a point in the future. The benefit of this structure is that it immediately locks in contracts down the price curve, increasing the incentives for investment. We proposed this same method in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Accelerating Investment & Productivity: Financing The Next Generation Of Firm Power

Employ America has begun new work focused on solving the financing challenges associated with the next generation of firm power. American Affairs recently published our piece “How Financialization Can Complement Industrialization” in which we discuss how the forces for standardization and public policy are essential at the real industrial level and equally so in the financial and risk management practices that get adopted. This effort is essential to understanding how the United States can overcome the supply and inflationary risks associated with the pending roll-off of the aging cohort of facilities that supply most of the baseload power in the United States.

To execute on these goals we have deepened our bench, adding Nicholas Birkhead to the Employ America team as an Energy Analyst. Nicholas significantly deepens our capacity to track electricity market dynamics, analyze financing mechanisms, and craft powerful policy solutions that serve both stability and growth objectives.

We have already identified politically attractive and economically powerful policy solutions, rounded in statutes already enacted – authorities capable of carrying the next generation of potential firm power solution – whether nuclear, geothermal, long-duration energy storage, or other sources – through to commercial maturity. We are pairing that legal groundwork with deep financial modeling and granular stakeholder engagement across the federal government, state governments, and private sector participants in the value chain. We will have more to publish soon, and for those interested in some of the exciting developments we already have underway, we welcome you to reach out to us directly.

Preventing Shortages & Inflation: The Kitchen Table Project

We see a real need for policy development to directly address elevated inflation and cost of living concerns. The United States has some blunt macroeconomic tools that can reduce inflation, but they come through indirect mechanisms and risk substantial collateral damage to the labor market. What we need are targeted, credible tools and policies for directly addressing inflationary frustrations. So, we are pleased to announce our collaboration with the Kitchen Table Project, with key members of the Employ America team making important contributions to the analysis of affordability challenges and proposed solutions, including Skanda Amarnath, Arnab Datta, Preston Mui, and Ashley George.

Enhancing State Capacity: Protecting & Reimagining Independent Agencies

As keen observers of the Federal Reserve, we take the independence of the institution seriously. We see enormous benefits to the United States having competent agencies that do not stoop to the cheapest political incentive. Government’s ability to act in the right moments with the right tools hinges on public trust. The Trump administration and the current Fed Chair’s conduct have us on alert to efforts to undermine Fed independence, whether overtly with the attempted firing of Lisa Cook or more subtly. President Trump has previously made some excellent appointments to the Federal Reserve, and it is our hope that the independence and the competence of the institution is respected.

Recent Supreme Court rulings seemingly protected the Fed from immediate erosion of its independence, but have also pushed a whole range of valuable institutions into a politicized fate. Congress created several institutions in a manner that was intended to promote representativeness and an independent sense of competence, only to now see these institutions vulnerable to higher levels of politicization. Agencies like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the National Science Foundation are now liable to fall into a more divisive equilibrium that comes at a cost to internal competence. For future institutions – like a Strategic Resilience Reserve – it is essential for Congress to be able to trust that discretionary authorities are constrained and wielded without catering to the cheapest political motivations.

The design space for reestablishing agency independence is larger than commonly assumed, and we are advancing efforts to map out the full solution set. The pathways we are developing include mechanisms that conditionally claw back legislated powers when independence is breached, greater use of corporate and banking charters, and agencies endowed solely with quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial powers that fit within the exceptions the Court has left standing. These questions extend well beyond the Federal Reserve: anyone who cares about institutional competence – in nuclear licensing, energy regulation, scientific funding, or the integrity of our statistical agencies – has a stake in getting these designs right. As we outline these pathways in the coming months, we hope to work with partners to rebuild durable, apolitical competence across government.

Conclusion

A year ago, we argued that an age of turbulence demanded a broader toolkit. The twelve months since – the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the resurgence of inflation risk, an accelerating AI investment cycle, and new judicial constraints on the administrative state – have reinforced that thesis. Some of our work is now visible in bipartisan legislation, administration programs in operation, and the frameworks policymakers use to think about commodity resilience. Much of the rest is groundwork: analysis, financial modeling, convening, and stakeholder engagement that will surface over the second half of the year. The road ahead remains turbulent, and the stakes for getting policy right remain high. We are doing the work, and we look forward to sharing more of it soon.

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