Your feedback on where to find a job... Skip the four-year degree, make $80,000... The latest data on the labor market... The next target for the 'White House portfolio'... Weaning off China dependence...
Our mailbox is full of replies to yesterday's edition...
We seem to have struck a nerve by pointing out where people can find jobs these days.
"We need people who work with their hands," we wrote yesterday, quoting our Dr. David "Doc" Eifrig's latest issue of Retirement Millionaire.
In this issue, Doc discussed the need for skilled labor in America...
These jobs – electricians, welders, HVAC technicians, etc. – are in demand today and likely will be for years. Amid all the headlines about AI replacing human workers, companies need real people to build the physical infrastructure that will power all of America's new digitally driven projects.
But businesses are having a hard time finding people trained up to do the work.
To this point, Doc recommended Retirement Millionaire subscribers buy shares of a business that "employs thousands of the very specialists everyone else is desperate to hire," trading at a cheaper earnings multiple than the S&P 500 Index. Find the details in the issue.
Many of you also see value in highly skilled physical labor today...
Subscriber Jack F. is a retired engineer who worked in the aerospace, semiconductor, and cryogenic (low-temperature-related science and technology) fields. He wrote in with his story and observations...
I just read the article on the skilled labor shortage in the USA. No surprise there because for years young people have been guided towards a college degree. It's good that you help spread the word to young people that a career in skilled trades is worth pursuing.
Before Jack got college degrees in mechanical engineering and manufacturing technology, he says he worked "as a milker on a large dairy, a welder, a machinist, an auto mechanic and an aircraft assembler." That helped him relate with both "the guy on the floor" and "the guy in the office" after a varied career.
And Jack continued his note by sharing a real-life example of what we discussed yesterday...
One of my hobbies is metal fabrication and I recently tutored a young man in our neighborhood on the different welding methods... Stick, MIG & TIG. While tutoring him, he was attending both high school and completing a welding program at a trade school. As I'm sure you are aware, companies recruit from the trade schools, and he was offered a job with a high purity piping contractor before graduating.
He is now nineteen years old and has been working for that contractor for a little over a year doing orbital welding in a local semiconductor fab (Arizona). His pay is in excess of $80K/year. With his 401K contribution and the match by his employer, he is putting away $700.00/week. This is in addition to his union pension which he also contributes to. Aside from his employed job, he and a work associate have started doing handyman, household plumbing on the side.
I say all this to reinforce what your article pointed out. That there are tremendous opportunities for young people in the trades and companies are snatching them up right out of high school. Let's see, should I tell a young person to go to college, spend a small fortune on tuition, and get a four-year degree in something like a Community Organizer or go to a trade school and start at $80K out of high school with minimal student debt? You know my answer.
In fact, I tell young people that are interested in the trades to become an electrician. That is because the side jobs that are available to an electrician are tremendous.
Stansberry Alliance member Stephen G. wrote in with similar thoughts, and a suggestion for further reading – a book co-authored by our former colleague Doug Casey called The Preparation...
Corey, Thanks for the great work you do. Re: Jobs of the Future, if you haven't already done so, you should check out The Preparation.
It's a well-structured program (targeted at young men... they should have done one for young women too, IMO). It is geared towards the kind of hands-on work Doc highlighted, but with a healthy dose of character-building and real-life experience acquisition that puts "grads" far ahead of their 4-year college contemporaries.
I am in no way related to the authors, but I do wish I had this resource years ago when my children, now grown with kids of their own, were finishing up high school. A couple of them would be much better off today if they had access to something like The Preparation as they approached adulthood.
I've become increasingly skeptical of the value inherent in the typical 4-year college degree. Admittedly, if a young person's goal is to become a doctor, astrophysicist, or electrical engineer then a 4-year degree is a necessary first step.
But as the cost of such a degree has outpaced inflation, according to Gemini, by as much as 300% to 700%, over the past 40 years, the vast majority of college grads end up with crushing debt that survives bankruptcy and, if they are lucky, an entry-level job where the real practical learning begins. Not only that, but less than half of college grads (only 27% to 45%) pursue work in their major field of study! That means over 50% of them have paid handsomely for a 4-year degree that they don't go on to use.
Finally, we have a message from subscriber Tim L. that could spark further conversation...
To your comments about college and the shortage of trade labor skills, I have one thought...
Let's forgive student loans for college students who failed to make the cut in the job market and reward them with a new student loan for a trade school. I hope all of your readers will contact their congressional representatives and recommend it.
Thanks for your feedback, all. What do you think? As always, keep your notes coming to feedback@stansberryresearch.com...
And if you haven't read Doc's latest Retirement Millionaire issue on this subject of skilled-labor demand – and the investing opportunity tied to it – existing Retirement Millionaire subscribers and Stansberry Alliance members can check it out here and get up to speed.
(And if you don't have a subscription, you can learn more here and get started today.)
As for indicators about the jobs market...
This morning, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics published its "nonfarm payrolls" reports for October and November, both delayed by the partial government shutdown.
November's data showed 64,000 new jobs, but 105,000 jobs were lost in October. The unemployment rate now stands at 4.6%, a four-year high. And excluding the pandemic spike, it's the highest since February 2017.
The report did have a couple of bright spots, or at least mixed messages.
First, fewer people are remaining unemployed for more than 27 weeks. So more people are losing jobs, but they're finding new work faster.
In total, the U.S. has 7.7 million job openings. We suspect many of them are for electricians, metalworkers, and other skilled blue-collar roles.
An update on the 'White House portfolio'...
In October, we unveiled the "White House portfolio." It's not a formal recommendation, but it's a way to track the government's investment in public companies for "national security" reasons.
The group includes chipmaking giant Intel (INTC), as well as three "critical materials" miners.
This week, the government announced plans to add a fifth company to its holdings... Korea Zinc, the world's largest zinc smelter.
Yesterday, Korea Zinc announced that it would form a joint venture ("JV") to build a big, advanced smelting facility in Tennessee.
Zinc is needed for the production of other metals and strategic minerals in semiconductors and advanced defense technologies, along with rustproofing and other industrial uses.
That plan to expand in the U.S. will cost about $7.4 billion, Korea Zinc said. And the U.S. government is going to play a big part...
Korea Zinc said that it will sell about $1.9 billion in new shares to the joint venture. The U.S. Department of War will hold about 40% of the JV. The rest will be held by, as media reports call them, "U.S.-based strategic investors."
That's not the end of the government's involvement...
The U.S. government (along with American financial institutions) will also provide $4.7 billion in loans. And the Commerce Department will award $210 million in subsidies under the CHIPS and Science Act (which aims at building up domestic semiconductor factories).
Korea Zinc's shares spiked about 25% higher at the open in South Korea on Monday, before coming back down to Earth and finishing up about 5%. Then the stock fell more than 13% on Tuesday, as two of its shareholders sued to block the issuance of new shares to sell to the U.S.
So, it's not quite a done deal yet. We'll keep an eye on the developments.
But as we said in October, it's hard to beat the government's performance so far. Since the government's first "investment" in Intel on August 22, the S&P 500 is up about 6%. All of the White House's "holdings" have soundly beaten the broader market since then...
Once again, this deal is all about China...
While it shouldn't come as a surprise that zinc will be included in the new Tennessee facility, a lot more minerals will also come out of it. As Korea Zinc said in its press release...
The 13 planned products include basic industrial metals such as zinc, lead, and copper; precious metals including gold and silver; and key strategic minerals such as antimony, indium, bismuth, tellurium, cadmium, palladium, gallium, and germanium.
All in all, 11 of the 13 minerals and metals produced at the site will be "critical materials." So, this latest investment follows the national security theme that the rest of the White House's portfolio fits into...
With Intel, the White House is aiming to bring chip manufacturing back home and reduce America's reliance on Taiwan. And the other four companies in the portfolio mine and refine metals and minerals that are mission-critical for the defense and technology sectors (including AI).
As part of the Genesis Mission executive order (which Dan Ferris covered in the December 5 Digest), the White House directed the secretary of energy to identify "at least 20 science and technology challenges of national importance."
And "critical minerals" were included as an example. Korea Zinc explained why the U.S. securing these supplies is so important. Here's more from its press release...
The United States is one of the world's largest consumers of critical minerals, driven by the concentration of electric vehicles, batteries, data centers and artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductors, and defense industries.
By securing domestic production of critical minerals, the U.S. protects its plans to dominate AI and data centers. This way, they can't be derailed by tensions with China – which dominates the world's production of rare earth minerals – or any other nation in the global supply chain.
We'll close with what Dan wrote in the December 5 Digest... The government is picking winners in the materials sector. And it's letting investors know which stocks it's backing. As Dan wrote...
It's like the government is begging to make you rich by telling you which stocks it will send higher.
Whether you believe that's right or wrong, it's the investing environment we're in today.
New 52-week highs (as of 12/15/25): Valterra Platinum (ANGPY), Barrick Mining (B), Alpha Architect 1-3 Month Box Fund (BOXX), WisdomTree Japan SmallCap Dividend Fund (DFJ), iShares MSCI Italy Fund (EWI), iShares MSCI Spain Fund (EWP), FirstCash (FCFS), Franklin FTSE Japan Fund (FLJP), Cambria Foreign Shareholder Yield Fund (FYLD), Mueller Industries (MLI), Newmont (NEM), Novartis (NVS), Sprott Physical Silver Trust (PSLV), Roche (RHHBY), Roku (ROKU), Sibanye Stillwater (SBSW), and iShares Silver Trust (SLV).
We covered a lot of mail above, so we'll skip the mailbag section here today. But, as always, e-mail us at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.
All the best,
Corey McLaughlin and Nick Koziol
Baltimore, Maryland
December 16, 2025
