Rare Earth Talent Scramble Lures 86-Year-Old From Retirement

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1:34Carol Massar:Make more of what's yours. Accounts subject to credit approval. Restrictions and limitations apply. Cards are issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A., member FDIC. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevec on Bloomberg Radio. This is a story we really wanted to bring to you. It's a great read. It's among the most read. We know the U.S. is really trying to rebuild its domestic supply chain for rare earth elements. We know rare earth plants are complicated. They're expensive to build, especially in the U.S. It's different from what we see in some other parts of the world.

2:15Carol Massar:In the U.S., you've got permitting timelines far longer than mining-friendly countries that you see over in Asia and South America. Yeah, and this is an interesting story because finding talent to run those. This is 86-year-old former retiree Jack Lifton. They're bringing him kind of out of retirement to do this. So we want to go to Bloomberg's J. Zip Lurink, your Bloomberg News North American metals mining reporter. You spoke to him for this story on Bloomberg. I have to ask you, first off, how did you find him? Well, so interestingly, I mean, I speak to a lot of people in the rare earths business, and a few of them had mentioned to me that there's an interesting trend going on, which is that companies are pulling people out of retirement to help on the engineering side.

2:57And there are actually a few firms that have employed people who are over 75, some of them over 80, like this guy Jack, who are now working. They've got plenty to do. And so I was asking around, I was like, can you put me in touch with one of them? And eventually that led me to this guy.

3:11Carol Massar:Tell us about Jack Lifton. He sounds like a character. So Jack Lifton is 86 years old. He started his career in 1962. We had not yet put men on the moon. And at the time, he was helping process and separate Europium, which is a very specific niche type of rare earth element that was used for color television. It made television no longer black and white. That was like his first job. He worked out of California. He moved to Michigan. He worked in the auto sector for a little bit. He was really there at the birth of the rare earth industry globally. It was at a time when, you know, consumer electronics were really taking off and they needed these people to do this kind of stuff.

3:49and he was like literally one of the first people there.

3:52Carol Massar:So when did he go out of retirement? Or when did he actually retire? So he retires. It's funny. His career basically paces like the peaks and valleys of the American rare earths industry. So he retires in 1999, around the time that the rare earths business in the U.S. is starting to crumble. You know, China's becoming a big power player in critical minerals. A lot of the stuff is going overseas. His pension is looking good. He's made enough money. He calls it a day. Not bad. So why is it so hard to find talent? I mean, where are these engineers? Are there no more coming up in the pipeline? Is this not the cool thing to study in school anymore?

4:27I mean, that's really it. In part, it's not the cool thing to study in school anymore. People don't study mining engineering, and Jack had a lot of colorful and unprintable things to say about that. But I mean, really, if you just take a 40 ,000 foot view of this, the US outsourced this business decades ago, and that means that along with the actual mines and the processing plants, they also outsourced the talent.

4:53Carol Massar:It's such a bigger shift in terms of our country. And I think about my dad was an engineer, worked on the space program. My team gets tired of me saying it. But everybody was an engineer. And if you go back to a certain generation, there were so many. Having said that, OK, where are all the engineers? Where do we find them globally? Are they in China? Are they over? Where are they? Predominantly China. Today, really the biggest employer of rare earth engineers in the world, it's the People's Republic of China. I mean, they have spent decades really building out a humongous workforce for this stuff to the point that in China today, you can go to school like there are schools specifically for rare earth engineering.

5:35That's not something that there is anywhere else in the world. You can't find that in the US. I think there are maybe about a dozen accredited mining schools in the US. But there, not only do they have mining schools, they have schools that have huge specialty programs specifically for rare earths. And so to this day, that's where they all are. So then what is the federal government doing? What are universities doing to help out with this problem? Well, they're trying sort of, it's sort of a patchwork kind of solution. And, you know, all of it is a bit of a moonshot. But, you know, they're trying to partner with companies to try to sort of like entice workers back to the sector.

6:11They're running into the same struggles that I think every skilled trade is right now, which is that it's just really hard to bring people back to these sectors. And so, you know, the Trump administration has put a lot of money into rebuilding the domestic supply chain of critical minerals. And they've also, you know, to their credit, recognized the need for talent as well. And so we've seen universities get some funding through Department of Energy programs to help, you know, build out, you know, programs for rare earth engineering and, you know, metallurgy. But it's a patchwork set of solutions.

6:45It's still really, really hard to do.

6:46Carol Massar:Jacob Lawrence, you know this field so well. I mean, I can get it. You can throw money at something. Are there even instructors to do it, to teach the next generation? So there's one of the big problems that came up when I was talking to professors, when I was talking to directors of these programs in the U.S. is that, you know, a lot of them say, you know, one of the problems is they just can't even find the teachers to do this stuff. Because if you go back 20 years, you know, we'd outsource the industry by then. It had gone over to China. And so, you know, the number of people in the U.S. who like literally know how to process a rare earth element is really small.

7:22Carol Massar:Can you talk about that? It's difficult. And that's the other thing that I think in terms of having the expertise you talk about is unlike commodities such as gold or copper, our rare earths require an intricate refining process that the U.S. has scarcely performed in decades. I mean, we just haven't, and it's difficult. It's not a quick learn, is it? It's incredibly complicated. And I mean, as if mining isn't complicated enough, you know, rare earths really - Mining hard. Yeah, exactly. It's not just finding rocks in the ground, you know, and when it comes to, you know, like copper or nickel or gold, those are humongous markets globally.

7:57And so, you know, over time, even in the West, you know, we have the ability to process this stuff. I'm not saying that it's simple, but, you know, there are evolved technologies to do this kind of thing. Rare Earths, like, these are much smaller markets to begin with. China, again, controls the bulk of them. And refining them is just, it's very delicate and it's very complicated. And you're separating, you know, incredibly similar minerals from each other in an attempt to distill very specific sets of minerals. So you've got all these borderline unpronounceable minerals like terbium, dysprosium, neodymium, and you're constantly running these.

8:35Oh my gosh, show off. But I'm totally impressed. I've spent years recounting this stuff at this point. But you spend a lot of time trying to separate this stuff out and it's a long, arduous, complex process. What about the rare earth plants themselves? I mean, dig into that a little bit. They're tough to build. They're expensive to build. Yeah, they're tough to build. They're expensive to build for all of the above reasons. Beyond the talent issue, there's also their permitting struggles. There's a lack of investment in the sector. Even with the Trump administration putting money into this, you have to assure investors, if you're building a rare earths plant, that this is going to be something that's going to be profitable in 10 years.

9:18It's not easy to do.

9:19Carol Massar:Going back to the talent, and indeed, though, there are folks that are finding their way into this world. Tell us about Neil Hogan, who's 24 years old. Yeah, that's right. So, I mean, there's been so much attention paid to the rare earth sector over the past few years that I think that's actually made it interesting for some people who, you know, maybe want to try their hand at this, you know, potentially pivotal industrial moment in the West. And so I spoke to this one guy. He's 24 years old. His name is Neil. He went to Penn State. He studied chemical engineering. All his classmates went into the petroleum business because that's, you know, the big employer in the U.S.

9:54if you're a chemical engineer. And he really wanted to work at a startup. He wanted to work, you know, somewhere sort of boots on the ground where he would get a little bit more responsibility rather than working at a big firm and having less responsibility. And so he wound his way up at this small Brazilian rare earths firm called a Clara, which is trying to build a rare earths plant in Louisiana. And so, you know, for a 24-year-old guy fresh out of college, he has a surprising amount of responsibility for processing and refining or, you know, trying to process and refine these elements like terbium, dysprosium.

10:29Carol Massar:He's happy about his decision? He's happy about his decision. At least that's what he's telling me so far. He's only been there four months, so I've got to check with him in a year. I'm just curious because you mentioned this 24-year-old. what's a salary for some kid coming out and going into this industry? It's not a lot, and I don't know what Neil's salary is, but on average we see that salaries for mining engineers is lower than it is for the petroleum business. Maybe that's an issue. I think that's part of the issue. When I looked into this, it seems like it's about$80 ,000 a year. For petroleum, you're looking at$120 ,000.

11:04Carol Massar:Something that we often talk about, and it relates to the tech industry, is talent wars. And you remind us about, you know, back in May that there was litigation between MP Materials and U.S. Rare Earths, and it was over the recruitment of a senior engineer. Like, so people, there are talent battles, talent wars, right? Yeah, that's right. And again, this just comes down to the fact that it's such a small pool of talent is that you have companies who are fighting over the few that are around. All right, so bring it back to, you know, I believe the elderly always have some words of wisdom. Bring it back to Jack Lifton, 86 years old.

11:40Carol Massar:What does he think that we need to be doing? And how do we fix this? Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest, he's a bit of a cynic. And so I don't know that he necessarily came to me with these big, bold solutions. I mean, the quote that he gave me was, if you're looking for rare earth engineers in the US right now, check the cemeteries and then check assisted care. So, you know, he's not exactly this, you know, bundle of joy that, you know, knows how we're going to get there. But I think at the same time... But he makes a really good point. He makes an excellent point. I think he's one of the more blunt characters that I've encountered in Rare Earths, but also a very sober character.

12:17But I mean, I think that he still thinks that if the U.S. can really invest in the talent side, that's going to bring about a Rare Earths industry again. He'll be the first to say that you can't just throw money at plants. You have to really invest in the people. You have to really work with universities and colleges to entice new workers to come into this field. That's how you're going to build a rare earths industry. Quick 30 seconds. I see you smiling as you're talking about all this. So what's the pitch? I mean, how much fun are you having covering this sector? Why should people get involved in it?

12:49Yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting sector, you know, all of a sudden. You know, mining used to be a sleepy town, I think, in the world of journalism, especially in the U.S., because we outsourced it all and there wasn't a lot to cover. And I mean, now there's just a lot of investment in it and it's exciting again. And it's like being at the beginning of an industrial revolution, you know, and so, yeah, you know, if it works out, then it's quite a moment.

13:13Carol Massar:It's a great read, great reporting. Jacob, thank you. Thank you. Jacob Lawrence. He is Bloomberg News, North America metals and mining reporter.

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