Amid Major U.S. Labor Market Needs, the Biden Administration Could Facilitate the Migration of Needed Workers through Existing Channels

WASHINGTON — With the United States recording more than 10 million job openings each month since mid-2021 and the unemployment rate hitting a 54-year low in January, the U.S. economy is hungry for more workers. Yet longstanding bureaucratic inefficiencies in the legal immigration system and case backlogs that worsened dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic are preventing individuals eligible for immigration to the United States from filling some of the vacancies.