Skilled Trades Labor Shortage 2026: A $1.7 Million Job Crisis and an Investment Angle

This is Invest Talk from KPP Financial, helping investors make sense of the markets one day at a time. Here's your host, Luke Guerrero. Good afternoon everybody and welcome to the Tuesday October 6th, 2026 edition of Invest Talk. I'm your host Luke Guerrero and I'll be with you over the next 45-50 minutes or so as we dissect what happened in the market today, bring you stories that matter and answer your finance and investment questions. Before we get started, I do want to give you a quick heads up because the date is getting ever closer. It is just under three weeks away. Be sure to mark your calendar for October 24th. It is a Saturday and you are invited to join the KPP team as well as guest experts we're bringing for our first in-person Invest Talk retirement summit. It is a special event. It is free of charge, but seating is limited. So if you are interested in learning more about financial planning, about estate planning, wills, real estate taxes, I encourage you to head over to investtalk.com and submit your registration today. All right and just a bit we'll talk about today's market performance and run down our show topics, but let's tackle a caller question first. Hi, great show. I just wanted to get your analysis of BCE and if it was a good investment. Okay, thank you. BCE is a telecom company out of Canada. It is Bell Canada. They have wireless service. They got fiber internet and they are a bit of a rough shape, right? We've seen a lot of telecom companies over the past couple of years get beaten down. Telecom companies in general exist within an industry that means they operate with a really high leverage, really high debt. In fact, they got 34 billion in debt on the 26.2 billion dollar market cap, both of those being in Canadian dollars, not in US dollars. But still a lot of debt, a lot of leverage and less than stellar returns. They have been negative going back to 2022. It has underperformed its industry in three out of those five years. Revenue growth is at 1.3% on an annualized basis. Return on equity has shrunk from where it was four or five years ago. Margins are pretty steady, but all in all, do you want to own a company that is highly leveraged in an environment where rates are rising. Now, one thing that is going forward or a couple of things that are going forward, their fiber business seems to be working. That about 14% growth there, their internet revenue grew 14% year over year. And they're trading really at their low, going back to 2022. So the downside risk may seem minimal to you, but I think you have opportunity cost here. And even if we weren't in a rising rate environment, which we are, which means debt and tens of businesses don't do poorly, telecoms tend to be a very difficult space in which to see solid realized returns. Now, I know why you're looking at this, because the dividend yields 6.2%. But that can't overcome the overall capital destruction. Let me let me look at the total return here real quick. Because when you have a situation like this, you can't just look at price return, because the yield has been really high. So there you go. Going back to one year, the total return is still negative 8%. Going back five years even keeping into taking into consideration dividends, you're looking at negative 9% on an annualized basis. The cumulative return is negative 37 versus the Canadian stock index is positive 100. So don't look at the dividend and look through the dividend. BCE, going to have to pass. We had a great show for you yesterday. Justin looked at emerging markets and specifically talked about how oil the dollar and Iran have put those markets under pressure. He also answered a listener question on takeer A and F, which is Abercrombian Fitch. If you want to learn more about Abercrombian Fitch or emerging markets, I encourage you to check out yesterday's episode of Invest talk. And remember, the best way to never miss an episode of Invest talk is to subscribe where you get your podcasts. All right, onto today where we have plenty of great things to bring you, including our main focus point about skilled labor. Now there's been a bit of a shortage in 2026, a $1.7 million job crisis and an investment angle. There was a new report which showed 1.7 million skilled trade jobs will open every year through 2035. And experts have no idea who we're going to fill in. It isn't just a workforce story. It is a macro economic pressure point that really could affect construction jobs, infrastructure spending, as well as inflation for years to come. We'll also be talking about the 2027 cost of living adjustment. Thousands of dollars that were unclaimed at the Treasury and should we have time at the end of the show a little bit about your tax bill. As always, we have some calls ready to play from the voice bank, including one on living as a senior or rather senior living facilities and another on ticker V.O. As well as questions that came in from the comment section of the Invest talk at YouTube channel. I were headed into a break. When we come back, we have to talk about the market today. Remember, you can call anytime the Invest talk voice line. You know the number? Eight at eight? Ninety nine chart. There are a few things that make KPP financial special. One of them is parallel investing. This means they invest right alongside their clients. Here's how it works. When KPP financial makes a trade for their clients, just in client makes the same trade for himself and KPP on the same day at the same price and same percentage. No front running, no special treatment. Learn more about parallel investing at investtalk.com. While the market hit another fresh record high today, both the NASDAQ and S&P big in the green side. The Dow was up 49 basis points. Really the the bigger underperformer the day was the Russell 2000, which was down 59 basis points on the day. And even with the calculated index being positive, I mean Brett still looked good. It was the best we'd seen since the early August. I would say, you know, you had big tech. That was mostly higher you had some of those consumer spending names like airlines and cruise lines doing really well. On the flip side, those names attend to be lagging due to the cost of debt financing, biotech, doing amongst the worst performers on the day, energy amongst the worst performers of the day. On the side, there were yields down about one to three basis points. You saw a slight bowl steepening move in the curve. The dollar was down 30 bips. Gold finished up 70 bips, silver up 50 and crude oil. Pretty choppy day still finished a bit higher. In terms of what really drove this, I mean, it was more just a continuation, I would say, what we saw yesterday. There was a bit of a helpful narrative around global rate stabilization. You had the eurozone, particularly looking pretty solid in terms of rates and the AI trade, which we all know has been floating markets for the better part of a couple of years. I mean, a bit of a mix bag. We saw solid guidance. We saw good earnings on one front. You know, we're seeing pretty strong compute capex demand, but the cost of everything is still going up. And the question is, how long can debt financing really float this? On the date of front ADP private payrolls of 23.75,000 to average over the past four weeks up for the fourth straight week in the highest level since June. The August trade deficit came in a bit deeper than expected. Looking ahead for the rest of the week, the New York Fed consumer inflation expectations, as well as the September FOMC minutes will be out on Wednesday, initial claims, and wholesale inventories will be out on Thursday. And then the preliminary university of Michigan consumer sentiment for October caps off the week on Friday. All right, from time to time, we do get questions via web forms. And we like to tackle those as soon as we can. Stick a look at this one from Devon, which is a has a question about my portfolio. It says, I'm 36 with about a $7,000 portfolio, and I contribute regularly. How many positions should I hold? the size to be diversified without spreading myself too thin. Well, that is a great question, and I think very similar to a question we got the other day where I essentially was talking about when you have a portfolio of this size, you can't really get to the rule of diversification where you hold, you know, 30 to 40 names, you know, and get that diversification benefit of different correlations. Because your position size would essentially be too small, and so I think the simplest and arguably the best approach at this side size rather is you want to choose one to broad ETFs as your core positioning. So think 70 to 80% of your portfolio, right? Your market cap weighted, broadly diversified ETFs, it gives you that instant diversification across thousands of stocks in one ticket, and then think about for that other 20 to 30% what are your high conviction ideas, right? You're one to two individual stocks or your one to two thematic ETFs, this core satellite approach. I think is really the good way to go about it with the position or with the portfolio of the size because you don't own why own the 15 to 20 names by $200 of 35 different stocks. No position is really large enough to matter there in terms of size. You don't want to over diversify here. And then as your portfolio grows, then you expand accordingly. Maybe when you get to the 25,000 range, you make it three to five positions of meaningful size based on your themes, 75,000 dollar range, five to 10 over $200,000 that really gives you the benefit of being able to attack those different names. I think at 36 with $7,000 in regular contributions, the single most thing, the most important thing to do here is really just keep contributing. I think that amount matters more than the allocation at this stage. So long as you are broadly diversified, one or two broad ETFs, a couple conviction picks is really all you need here. The complexity really just comes later when the portfolio as size starts to justify. I looks like we got time for one more voicemail before the break. Hi, this is Dennis. I'd like to know what you folks think of prologists. ELD is about $120 billion dollar company and I sure would be interested in your opinion. Thank you. All right, let's take a look at ticker PLD, which is prologists. Prologists is actually a name that we hold in. Oh, looks like I didn't want to pop up on my screen there. It's actually a name that we hold in one of our strategies for our clients. It is a logistics real estate and digital infrastructure company. And it's been doing pretty well over the past couple years, up 20% in 2025. It's pretty flat year to date, however, right now as you've seen rates move a bit higher. In the past couple months, you've seen this thing fall down from about 144 down to 120. I think the bull case here is permitting for data center expansion and e-commerce and generally speaking, the business is run at pretty solid debt levels relative to its market cap. I mean, $121 billion company, $35 billion in debt with 14.6% annualized growth in revenue. So we like this name. It's currently trading a bit below its average for looking priced earnings. Yeah, we like prologists, ticker PLD. Thanks for the call. All right, I didn't do break. When we come back, more answers to your finance and investment questions. You're listening on I am 1220 in the Bay Area or VR live stream. I encourage you to call now and ask your question live at 888-99 chart. Retirement planning is about more than reaching a certain number. It's about understanding how your investments, income, taxes, social security, and long-term goals all work together. At KPP Financial, we help clients put those pieces into one coordinated financial plan designed to make your retirement effortless. To learn more, visit investtalk.com. So we're about seven or eight days away now from really what is one of the most important announcements of the year for anybody who is retired. Next week, the Social Security Administration is going to announce the cost of living adjustment for 2027 and based on the CPIW data we've seen so far, I mean July came in at 3.4, August at 3.5. The call is tracking right around 3.5%. Senior Citizens League has that as their official projection. That would translate to roughly about $68 a month more for the average retiree, taking the typical benefit from 1940 to just over $2,000. I can already hear somebody thinking, you know, 3.5%. It's pretty decent. It's higher than the 2.5%. We got last year, but the problem is, and this is the part that doesn't really make the headlines, call is designed to keep you even with inflation. It's not a race. It is a treadmill. And for a lot of retirees, it's just not keeping up. Think about what's happened to the costs that matter most to people on fixed incomes. Medicare, Part B premiums. Those are up again. Those come straight out of your Social Security check before you see a dime. Medicare and Medicare Advantage premiums. Those are climbed. Property taxes, which we're going to talk about in a few minutes are surging in a lot of states. Grocery prices. They're still 29% above where they were in 2020. And if you're on Medicare Part D, the Drug Pricing changes from the Inflation Reduction Act help on some medications, but that structure's shifting a little bit. So that's $68 a month. It may sound nice on paper, but for a lot of retirees, it's already allocated before it arrives. It's the raise that was spent before it was even announced. Now for those of you out there who have a financial plan, and I think everybody out there should have a financial plan. What matters is, well, if you are approaching retirement or you're planning your own, don't treat cola as income growth. It's inflation catch up at its best, and it often undercompensates because CPIW doesn't perfectly capture the spending patterns of older Americans who spend disproportionately on healthcare and housing, which have inflated faster than the broad basket. The experimental CPIE, which waits elderly spending more accurately, has consistently run higher than CPIW. Congress has talked about switching it for decades, but thus far, they just haven't. So October 14th, the number will set the baseline for 2027 budgets for 70 million Americans. Look for it. Understand what it actually means, understand what it doesn't. Alrighty, let's, oh, looks like we got a live call, Richard from Santa Clarita. You got a question on takeer, R-E-Z? Yes. You know, in terms of this higher interest rate environment that we're in, I mean, listening to the show that, you know, V-N-Q, you know, kind of acts as a bond proxy, so yeah, maybe not such a good idea, but R-E-Z is in residential, and to dive a little deeper into it, it has holdings such as the Mid-American apartments and Viv Mark, which used to be, I think, Avalon Bay. Yeah. So in terms of long time investment, I realize, yeah, we have a rising interest rate environment now, but if you're looking for long-term investment, you'd like to get involved with real estate, but you don't want to, you know, deal with being a landlord or anything like this. Is this a good idea to own R-E-Z or, you know, the apartments specifically, you know, at this point, yeah, again, long-term investment horizon, looking at five, 10 years when I say long-term? Yeah, sure, that's a great question. You know, takeer, R-E-Z is the I-share's residential and multi-sector real estate ETF, so what it does is it gives you exposure to all sorts of reeds, right? You get senior housing, you get health care, you get storage apartment, single-family, manufactured homes, and does it in a pretty diversified way. And to your point, a lot of these reed ETFs and reeds in general are exactly how I would recommend getting real estate exposure rather than being a landlord, because nobody wants to deal with annoying tenants like me, or like anybody who's renting. When they're trying to live in retirement, I think this one specifically has a lot of good going for it, right? It has a bit of a targeted play on on the theme of aging demographics on housing shortage. Excuse me. And, you know, relatively low turnover in assets, which is definitely something that you like or that you should like. But again, my problem is we are in a rising rate environment and the reason why one invests in real estate and reats is because they want income. And until rates fall, you're just gonna see, you're likely to see, not guaranteed, but you're likely to see general, general, underperformance of the real estate sector because you can get over 5% from a 30-year bond. So that's 30 years of guaranteed, effectively guaranteed over 5% income. That's just generally where investors are gonna gravitate towards. So I like your idea. I like why you wanna invest in this. I just think the real estate sector generally is gonna be beaten down or should be beaten down, likely to be beaten down for some time. But when rates stabilize and may start to move lower, that's when you really wanna get that exposure to reats. Thanks for the call. Predating to break, when we come back, my main focus point and more answers to your finance and investment questions. (upbeat music) - At KPP Financial, accountability means more than advice. It means we invest alongside you through our parallel investing approach. When we recommend an investment for clients, one or more KPP principles, invest their own capital at the same time. Same day, same price, same percentage. If your portfolio moves, ours does too. That is alignment, that is transparency. That is the KPP difference. Visit investtalk.com to get your free portfolio review. (upbeat music) - The Invest Talk Retirement Summit is coming to Irvine, California on Saturday, October 24th. You are invited to join KPP Financial and guest experts in tax, estate planning, real estate, and financial planning for an exclusive in-person event. You will focus on five key decisions that can shape your financial future. Attendance is complimentary and seating is limited. Reserve your place now at investtalk.com. - Before we get to my main focus point, I wanted to give you a bit of a schedule update. Justin and I are gonna be out of town for the next couple days for a wedding. So we have set up a bit of a program for you all. Tomorrow's gonna be a best of show. Thursday is going to be a special program. He and I pre-recorded. Going all over all sorts of personal finance topics. I like it, I think you'll like it as well. Then Friday we got a special interview Justin did with Anthony Katz, the founder of Hyperice. So you get these podcasts exactly where you get this one. I encourage you to check them all out. We wanted to give you a little bit of a change of pace rather than just a couple best of episodes. We think you'll find all of them very informative. All right, let's talk a little bit about skill labor because a coalition last week that included a couple of dozen heavyweights like BlackRock, Ford, Google released a report through something called the Alliance for America's skilled traits. And the numbers were interesting. The United States needs 1.7 million new skilled traits workers every year through 2035. That's going into this report. And our training pipeline is producing about 55% of what we need. Which is not a lot. Now within context, there are over 18 million people working in skilled traits right now. So your electricians, your plumbers, your welders, your machinists, and they contribute about 3.8 trillion in GDP annually. And that may sound like a lot. And it is. That's roughly the size of Germany's entire economy. But nearly a quarter of them are 55 or older. Just over 10% or under 25. So if you've got a workforce that's aging out fast with no replacement generation coming up behind it, you're in a bit of a pickle, right? This isn't an abstract problem. It is that we have not invested in this because every major capital spending theme we've talked about on this show, every single one of them runs through the skilled traits. You want to build data centers for AI? You need electricians and pipe vendors. You want to build the power grid. Gotta get yourself some line workers. You want to reshore manufacturing. You need your machinists, your welders. You want to build a housing to fix the affordability crisis. Framers, plumbers, and roofers. Every one of these trends is essentially bottlenecked by the same constraint. There are not enough people who know how to do the physical work. Nine states in particular, I think, are kind of feeling this the most acutely right now. Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas. What do they all have in common? Those are the growth states. They're high in word migration. Their construction is booming. They're data center corridors. The places with the most demand for skilled labor are the places where the shortage is the worst. Makes sense. What that means for us? Well, first, the companies that are employing skilled labor workers are going to face wage inflation. It's just gonna happen, right? This is a structural problem. You can't automate an electrician wiring a data center. You can't integrate AI in such a way that you replace a plumber fixing a burst pipe in a hospital. These are jobs that require a physical presence. Manual skill, judgment. They are by definition the jobs that are most resistant to AI displacement, which is ironic because the AI build out itself is one of the biggest sources of demand for these workers, but that's beside the point. Secondly, the cost of construction and infrastructure projects. It's gonna keep surprising the upside. If labor is scarce and demand is rising, you get exactly what you learn in any economics 101 course. You get higher prices. You get longer timelines. You get projects that come in far over budget. And when you're trying to build out utility grid capacity or develop properties for REITs or build out data centers or get facilities online, that's a problem. If you're modeling CAPEX for any company with significant construction or maintenance needs, your labor cost assumptions are probably too low. The opportunity lies in this. Companies that are solving the training pipeline problem, they're gonna capture enormous value. This report specifically calls out the need for faster, more accessible training pathways. Community colleges, vocational programs, apprenticeship platforms, skill verification technology, that ecosystem is underdeveloped and underfunded relative to the scale of the problem that is very true. So workforce development companies, education technology platforms, focused on trading, sorry, trades training rather, and companies that provide credentialing placement services, they exist in a structural growth position in this uneven market space. There's also the employment side. If you have fewer workers, you need each worker to be more productive. That means better tools, more modernization, more mechanization, more technology per worker, power tool divisions of big industrial conglomerates. They benefit from this exact type of dynamic, but as always, I wanna be careful, right? I'm not telling you to go buy a basket of construction stocks tomorrow because of a workforce report. What I'm saying is that skilled trade shortage is a bit of a structural constraint, and it's likely to shape the economics of the physical economy for the next decade. It's going to show up in earnings calls as the higher labor costs and project delays. It's gonna show up in an inflation data as sticky service is pricing, and it's gonna show up in government policy as increased funding for training. We spend a lot of our time on this show, talking about where capital is flowing. AI, data centers, reshoring infrastructure, but capital without labor is just money, sitting in a pile. The binding constraint on America's biggest investment theme isn't financing. It's finding the people who actually do the work, and right now we're producing barely half of what we're gonna need over the next decade. And the gap's widening. It's not narrowing, and it's going to show up in every sector of the economy that depends on building, on maintaining or repairing anything physical, which is pretty much all of them. It's keeping us moving and play another listener question from 888-99 chart. I have a question about senior living and skilled nursing facilities last week. What do you guys think about it, and how would you look at this space in general? And second question, I was downloading a specific name, which is Omega Healthcare Investors, OHI. I wonder what you guys think of it. Thanks a lot for all you guys do again, and I'll be listening on the show. Omega Healthcare Investors to go OHI is a healthcare read. It is one of the largest owners. of this skilled but labor nursing facility ecosystem, and they have been growing. They are senior housing, as well as they're out at home care book, really for the past couple of years. A lot of the assets are triple net least to operators, so it's just added in an operating portfolio segment as well. Most recently, I mean earnings was solid, they beat on funds from operation by about 7.8% rather than the growth was 7.8%, but they beat there, they beat on revenue, it was well above estimates, an operating income, was at $331 million versus 281, and the price moved a bit higher until recent months. This is another example of not being able to outrun macro trends, I would say, it's not all about rates here, I think they have a pretty high payout, so that leaves very little cushion. There is the reality as well, that from a quarterly report perspective, a lot of their earnings were from asset sales, and so asset sales are gonna look great one quarter, but the next quarter, number one, they're not gonna be there. And then number two, you also have fewer cash flow producing assets, and so it kinda hits you a little double there on the next side. I think as a defensive income stock, I know why you're looking at this 6.1% yield, but you can't really escape the macro environment, and so again, you've seen over the past three months, this thing down about 8.67%. So, as similar to the other read we talked about, I like the theme, but given that we're still in a cycle of rate hikes, I would hesitate to enter a position just now. Certainly would keep it on my watch list. That is to your OHI, Omega Healthcare Investors Inc. Thanks for the call. Let's go with two in a row from 8 to 8, 99 chart. So, I'm just gonna call in today about Argin Incorporated, Tigger Symbol, A/G/X. Go through my watch list for a little now, and you could take a look at the fundamentals of forming. Let me know if you think it's too pricey, or if you're thinking to pick up some shares, look like it's in a good industry, put the energy in the AI revolution. Let me know your thoughts. Thank you very much, thank you. All right, Tigger A/G/X is Argin Inc. It is a $5.4 billion market cap company that has pretty much no debt, as of the end of January 26th, it was at $3.9 million in debt. And just this year is supposed to cross the $1 billion threshold in revenue. And that's pretty impressive because back in 2021, they had about 392 million in revenue, and projected to be 1.4 billion this upcoming year. This company, what they do is they're an engineering and construction contractor, so they build natural gas fired power plants, as well as doing a lot of contract work for renewable and battery projects. As I already mentioned, earnings looks good. Right, we have solid revenue growth. What about earnings per share growth? I mean, 45.2% growth in earnings per share on an annualized basis going back the past five years. You have solid margin expansion from 7%, but to margin to about 16.9. Return on equity, although falling from the previous year is still solid in its projection at 31%. And here today, it's up 33.93. Now, with that being said, it's had a bit of a rough move over the past three months. It's down 42.14%, right? It's down roughly half from its high that we saw earlier this year at the 800 level. I think when you see solid growth like this, you gotta ask, okay, why did we get a beat, a raise, and a sell off? And oftentimes it happens not for any reason that is too alarming, but it looks like that in Q3, we had a bit of slowing growth and they're working through their project backlog and not getting a lot more additional projects to fill it. We saw their backlog fall from 2.9 billion to 2.5 billion with no major projects added. And so you gotta ask yourself, okay, but I'll buy this company, which now is trading at 25.9 times price to forward looking earnings. It was trading close to 40 back when it was at its high around the 800 level, is now when I want to get into this if business is starting to slow. That being said, right? I think that it is a, yeah, it's sitting on a billion dollar cash pile. And because of this shrinking, it's down about 50% is the new, you know, for me, I'm hesitant to enter here, given where momentum has turned. I think the market is likely to continue to sell off into December unless you see a correction in growth in this backlog shrinking. And so yeah, you could be entering a position here now that it's trading at the low end or right at the average apologize, right above the average of its five year price to forward looking earnings, or you could be buying it into a bit of structural weakness within the business itself. So oftentimes the best trade is not to make the trade immediately. I think for me, I would keep this one on my watch list and wait to see what happens in December. Earnings to see if they correct some of these things that the market is understandably a bit concerned about. That is AGX, thanks for the call. See if we can fit in a quick voicemail now. I love the show, wanted to get your take today on Brinker International, Ticker EAT, and like your thoughts are in the restaurant industry in general in this economy. Thank you very much, have a good day. Ticker EAT is Brinker International. It is an incredible ticker for a company in this industry. It's an $8 billion market cap company. Got it about $1.6 billion, excuse me, $1.6 billion and debt and only about $110 million cash on hand. So that's about $1.5 billion in net debt. The best couple of years, revenue growth has looked solid about 10% on an annualized basis. In fact, from 2025 to 26, it was 10% as well. So it doesn't look like it's slowing down to badly in spite of inflation and rising rates here. They're the parent company of Chili's. I love Chili's as well as a couple other businesses as well. They're reporting positive traffic. They're seeing record unit volumes from what I can tell. Their margins are expanding. It's a bit of an active value story, right? They're up 32% this year. They're still training at 14 times price to 4 looking earnings. I think it's probably the strongest, fast or casual dining brand in the country. And they have positive traffic in a time where a lot of restaurants are reporting the opposite. So if you're looking in the restaurant space, I think this is a pretty, pretty strong name to hold. Is the AT? Thanks for the car. Then Vestalk, I'm Luke Guerrero. We have one goal here to help you achieve your financial freedom. And our work continues after this break. So get your questions in now at 888-99. (upbeat music) Vestalk, tell your friends they can listen live, download the free podcast, or watch Vestalk on our YouTube channel. And they can leave their finance and investment questions any time on 888-99 chart. You might have missed it last week, but it's understandable if you did, it happened pretty quietly. But the Treasury Department completed the auto enrollment of more than 60 million children into what they're calling these Trump accounts. These are tax advantage savings accounts. Think of them as a starter retirement account for every American kid. Each account comes with a $1,000 federal seed contribution. And the money goes into a default bounce fund and grows tax-free until the child turns 18, at which point it can roll into a Roth IRA or be used for qualified expenses. And the concept is pretty smart policy, regardless of what you think about the branding. The idea is to get every American on the compound interest curve from birth. $1,000 invested at birth, growing at historical market returns is worth something like $15,000 to $20,000 by age 18 without anyone adding another cent. It normalizes the idea that investing is something everybody does. It educates people. It's not just people whose parents have brokerage accounts anymore. The catch is, the thousand isn't automatic. The account is auto enrolled, but the seed money has to be actively claimed by a parent or guardian through Trumpaccounts.gov. And if you don't claim it, the money just sits there. The federal holding account doesn't grow, it doesn't invest, it doesn't do anything. Commonwealth ran the numbers. This is a financial inclusion nonprofit. And they estimated that roughly 20% of eligible children, about 14 million kids over the pilot period, may never have their accounts claimed. That's 2.8 billion in federal seed funding that just sits there. The families that most are most likely to miss the claim window are exactly the families that program is also supposed to help the most. Lower income households, immigrant family, single parent households with less bandwidth and navigated government app. So this digital divide effectively, and a lot of ways starts to become a wealth divide. For all of you out there, if you are a parent, if you are an aunt or an uncle, if you're a grandparent, if you're a financial advisor, this is a good item to put on your action list. If you have a child in your life, maybe your child, maybe your nephew, maybe your niece, your grandchild, your client's children, make sure they claim this money. It's free money. The program is interesting because I think it creates a new recurring flow of capital into the markets as well. Billions of dollars of seed money, plus whatever parents contribute on top. This is from a market structure perspective, probably a bit of a tailwind for index funds. Targeted fund providers, it's a structural source of demand for equities that grows every year as new children are enrolled. But first, we got to sell the Sunclaim money problem. 2.8 billion sitting idle because people don't know about a government app. That is probably a policy failure. So, everybody, make sure you claim this money if your child is eligible today. Well, folks, once again, Justin and I will be out for the rest of the week. So, expect a best of episode tomorrow on Thursday. You will get a special episode. We're Justin and I talk all about personal finance, topics 5, topics to be exact. I won't tease them now. You'll have to listen to see what they are. Then on Friday, an interesting interview with a really great person and solid, incredible entrepreneur. Anthony Katz, he is the founder of Hyperice. If you are subscribed to Invest Talk, you will automatically download these podcasts. If you are not, then I encourage you to subscribe today. And lastly, before I head out for the week, I want to remind you about our in-person event on October 24th, where we will be bringing experts on taxes and real estate and financial planning and trusts and wills, as well as myself and Justin and the KPP team, to bring you this important Invest Talk retirement summit. Register now at Invest Talk dot com. All right, folks, that does it for another episode of Invest Talk. I want to thank you for listening and encourage you to tell your friends and family members about our free podcast downloads. While you're over there, we'd really appreciate it if you left us a rate and review. Additionally, if today made you think about your personal financial circumstances, your investments, your retirement, whether it all makes sense for you, I encourage you to head over to Invest Talk dot com. Schedule that free portfolio review. It's always good to have a second set of eyes. You wouldn't go to the doctor, hopefully, after everything has gone wrong. It's always good to get that financial checkup. Invest Talk dot com is where it all starts. And thinking, share its success. This is Invest Talk. Good night. Invest Talk is a trademark of KPP financial because of the nature of the interactive dialogue inherent in the format of this program. It's important for the listener to understand that not all comments made will apply to that. Specifically, nothing said she'll be taken to be investment advice or shall statements on this program be considered an offer to buy or sell security because such advice is rendered solely on an individual basis and at times will require that the investor review a prospectus before investing. Invest Talk is a copyrighted program of client, Pavlos, and Peasley financial, a registered investment advisor firm, which retains all rights. For more information regarding KPP's investment advisors, call 1-800-557-5461. 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