Kickstart: Labor costs also rising in 'low-cost' countries

The cost of "low-cost countries" is going up.

The rise in nearshoring — moving manufacturing closer to home, but still in areas with a less expansive labor force — means there's more demand for workers in those regions. Those jobs are coming on top of corporate moves to those countries because of small labor force at home.

In one example, Mexico has seen a 30 percent increase in average wages over the last five years, according to consultants at Plante Moran.

"What we're seeing now is that companies are looking to go to Mexico because they cannot find people in the U.S.," Alejandro Rodriguez of Plante Moran told Kurt Nagl from our sister paper Crain's Detroit Business. "Wages are increasing very rapidly. As a result of nearshoring [and] the many investments that are coming to Mexico, we're seeing even more of an increase in labor costs because companies are competing for talent."

And those costs aren't likely to go down, added Dan Sharkey, an attorney with Brooks, Wilkins, Sharkey & Truco in Birmingham, Mich., specializing in supply chain disputes.

"If you look at Mexico right now, there's a big influx of manufacturing jobs because of what's happening geopolitically," Ray Scott, CEO of automotive seating supplier Lear Corp., said. "So there just isn't enough employees to satisfy it."

The American Chemistry Council has begun the work of finding a replacement for Joshua Baca.

Baca had been head of the ACC's plastics division since 2020. No one is speaking publicly yet about the split, but it was unexpected. He was just in Paris representing ACC at the beginning of June for the global plastics treaty. (Let's not enter the rumor mill, OK?)

His interim replacement, Lee Salamone, has a lot of history within plastics — specifically polyurethanes. She is senior director of the ACC's Center for the Polyurethanes Industry. Her work with ACC has also stressed safety, helping to coordinate Safe + Sound Week. In 2016, she worked with ACC and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to establish an alliance to "encourage healthier workplaces."

Barbie's Dreamhouse wasn't always a plastic pad.

In an interactive online story, The New York Times writes that the original Dreamhouse that debuted in 1962 was a small cardboard "bachelorette pad" that folded down for easy storage and had considerably less pink than you might expect.

The Dreamhouse didn't grow into multistory homes until the 1970s and then it took another 20 years to truly adopt the pink palace aesthetic. Today's Dreamhouse stands nearly 4 feet tall and has a slide, a home office and an elevator that can accommodate dolls in the Barbie collection that use wheelchairs.