President Trump loves to talk about America first and his administration has a dislike of foreign workers, except in the food processing sector. As an administration he can make policies that suit him, but in a recent article by Michael Casey of the Associated Press, the effects on the ground are a little different than how the White House sees reality.

In a normal world, which the President wants to get back to, people travel from the cities to holiday spots because it is cooler and people are closer to nature. The wonderful attractions add to the atmosphere however the reality is the regions have tiny labor pools and there are millions of tourists which come through the area. The companies rely on green cards, J-1 and H-2b visas to staff the service sector jobs which the tourists use.The argument is the 20 million Americans could do the job, but the people have to go to the beach communities and mountain getaways, find housing and be paid at the hospitality rate. In addition rising housing costs and the jobs are not social distancing from other people.

Last year according to the state department more than 108,000 J-1 summer work travel visas were issued, this year the number is 1,787 in early July. This has resulted in many businesses scrambling to fill openings and the answer is to scale back hours or close completely. The jobs pay $14.00 a hour, now if the service sector paid double or triple such as the oil fields in North Dakota people would be moving across the country for the work.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, while we all want everyone to be well employed, the reality is service level jobs tend to be the lowest paying, are part time, seasonal but they are needed. If you do the math, hundreds of dollars could be the result of taking a seasonal job not thousands. Fortunately as a tech investor you can make that investing in the Nasdaq stocks. When we invest in stocks we ask the company to make a profit and pay dividends we do not ask how they are doing it as long as they are well above the law in their ethics.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.