 I'm Ann Marie Slaughter, CEO of New America, and I'm delighted to welcome you to our event on the future of work and specifically the five year anniversary of the shift commission. So in 2017, with just over five years ago, New America partnered with Bloomberg beta led by Roy Bahat to convene a commission on the future of work, and we called it the shift commission. And from the beginning, we wanted it to be an uncommission, in other words, instead of identifying 15 or so experts on work and the future of work and meeting over a year or more and issuing a report, we decided to take it on the road and have we really had almost some 100 commissioners in many different cities. In each city, we had some folks who were the same, and then others we would bring in. And so it was a kind of rolling commission and you're going to be in a number of those commissioners today, five years later. The commission focus specifically on the future of work as viewed through the lens of workers facing a very uncertain future and what they expected and thought I remember we interviewed truck drivers in Michigan who said automated trucks were at least 20 or 30 years down the road. They may have been more right than we thought but I still think it's not going to be that long. The commission was led by Kristen Sharp who ran a future of work project at New America then and I hope she's listening she was indispensable to the process, and as well as Roy Bahat and me and our commissioners came from business technology government policy academia and from various professions. We then published a report at the end of really almost a year of conversation and meetings across the country. And we summarize the research and identified for key insights, shaping the future of work, workers and technology that was the formal title the shift commission on work workers and technology. And I'm going to just run through those key insights before we then turn to a set of interviews to see what we got right, what we got wrong, and where we are today. So here are four takeaways. The first point was that we really need to rethink the role of employers in American society. You know employers are how you got your health insurance they have how you got your pension, there was a kind of lifelong commitment or at least a good long term commitment to stability. If that's no longer true, then what replaces that and we looked at networks of small businesses we looked at guilds worker associations, and also things like entrepreneurship training, and tried to imagine new ways to administer worker benefits which we are still definitely in the mid stuff. The second big point we came away with was that the future of work failed to align neatly with traditional political coalitions the idea, you know, labor on the left business on the right. No, it was much more complicated than that, particularly when you looked at the effects of technology. And really, right now, as we look at chat GPT and the future of AI, we suddenly realize that actually many more white collar jobs may be automated before blue collar jobs that's just one example of the ways in which this did not actually track with where you might think political positions are. The third point, one that I'm particularly fond of myself is that we must focus on older workers. I'm somebody who's written a lot about if you take time out for children maybe you don't stop working but you work in a different way. We still got a lot of career left at the other end, and we said look it's going to be very important to engage those older workers as a very fat they are they were the fastest growing segment of the workforce. And finally, the future of work will shape cities and regions now we certainly did not imagine the pandemic, but the pandemic and remote work this very screens we are all now on have made this point ever more powerful that depending on what kinds of jobs are going to impact, you can bring certain kinds of workers and it's going to be particularly important to be able to do this in non coastal areas and smaller, smaller towns. At the time long distance moves were in decline. I think that is changing but we can ask our commissioners that point. So those four big points. We're our major findings in 2017, 2018. Today, we are going to be, as I said, asking some of our former commissioners where we are now. And I just want to talk a little bit then about the what's happened over those past five years. We that those findings informed a lot of research by Bloomberg beta by a number of our commissioners and by new America, Bridget Schulte and the better life lab at New America, built off a set of extensive interviews hours and and subsequent ones and surveys to dig into the questions of work and well being and Bridget is now writing a book on American Hiroshi Hiroshi is the Japanese term for death by overwork. Something that Japan may be known for, but we are not strangers to and we also kicked off a partnership with the World Economic Forum. And indeed I'm about to introduce my colleague Shailen Jotishi. So we're looking at how workplace technology can make jobs better rather than than worse. So that is what came out of our are over the over the past three to four years. We decided that as the five year anniversary came up that we wanted to take another look and Roy Baha reached out and suggested that we do this event. And with his help, we have organized it. And indeed we are very grateful to Bloomberg beta for their initial support and for for working with us now. Unfortunately, Roy could not make it due to a family emergency and he's very sorry not to be here. We are very sorry not to have him but we wanted to go ahead. So I'm going to turn now to a video from Roy and then I will introduce Shailen Jotishi who will kick us off with our first interview. Hi everyone. I wish I were there with all of you today. It turns out that even for those of us who really specialize in understanding work. We struggle with the boundaries of life and work, and a good friend has left us and I'm choosing today to be in my grief, and with our friends and our family. I want to share some thoughts about the shift commission because when we did it. We were wise enough to know that predicting the future was a fool's errand. And we saw how the future of work with all the crises it could bring and all the hopes was already here, even then. What we wanted was to imagine possibilities for what could happen so that we could anticipate and prepare to respond. You know, reality did turn out to be more unimaginable than we thought. So I want to share a couple of thoughts on what's different than I expected, and a reflection on where we go from here. What's different, of course the pandemic with the pressure it put to change work to make work immediately remote where possible to change the geography of where people lived you'll hear from Jed, and from others today about that, that was completely unexpected. The other thing that was completely unexpected was that artificial intelligence which was the technology on which we focused would be just as potentially impactful for people who do work like the work that all of us do, as it would be for truck drivers, who we sat down with for cashiers who we thought about and others. And then the last thing is that we didn't anticipate that organized labor, which we thought of as an important historical force would become as fresh and as relevant, and it's as it's become. And even though we had many voices from organized labor including I Jen who's here today involved, we still couldn't have anticipated what this moment would be like. And a lesson I get from that is that transformation can be unimaginable, even while you're going through it. And to me, the call from that is a call for paying close attention. It's a call for noticing. It's a call for listening, something that I think we set a really healthy foundation for with shift. And even though you'll be hearing today from some elite voices. And ultimately, the answers really lie with the people who are most affected. And one consequence of the inequality in our society is that many of us are insulated, and it makes it hard to imagine what those who are affected are going through even, you know, let alone the life of somebody who is struggling socio economically, but even the life of the illustrator who's worried about the next AI model that might take their job, or one of us trying to figure out what tools to use. And so, Rachel Korberg and I from Families and Workers Fund wrote a piece about how the voices of workers are the ones that if we center will have the most wisdom. And what I see continuing from the shift commission work is that many of us are just as vigorously engaged, if not more so in bigger jobs I personally still have more questions than answers, and I'm focused on trying to support new and emerging forms of organized labor, while our firm continues to invest actively in AI, and in tools that support workers. And I want to thank new America, and Anne Marie and her team, Mary Alice Shaolin everybody, and all the original commissioners of the shift commission, our planning group that plotted the format our steering group that gave us guidance on the content all of our guests here today, and all of you who are watching you're all part of the quest that we have for answers. Right. Roy and I did not actually plan that out but we picked out many of the same same point so I'm going to turn it over to Shailen Jotishi. Shailen is a senior policy analyst with the Center for Education and Labor at New America, call it Selna, which is led by Mary Alice McCarthy and Shailen it has been working on this project with the World Economic Forum on how technology can improve work so I hand it off to Shailen who's going to interview Derek Thompson. Thanks so much and Marie and it's a pleasure to be with you all today. I too am very sorry that Rory can't join us but I will do my best to fill fill his big shoes. Our first speaker is Derek Thompson who's a staff writer at the Atlantic, where he publishes the newsletter work in progress on science tech and culture. Derek is the founder and host of the popular news podcast paint plain English with Derek Thompson and news analysts with NPR Derek appears weekly on national news here and now, and as a contributor to CBS news as well. His first book hit makers was named Book of the Year by the American Marketing Association, and his next book is actually coming out April 4 so we all have some exciting reading ahead of us in the months to come. So Derek thank you so much for being here with us. It's great to be here thank you. The book is not coming out April 4 it's actually coming out next year and it doesn't have a publication date so you should of course be entirely thrilled to read it but just hold on to that thrill for another 12 months or so. Thank you for the correction Derek I had my years mixed up. So speaking of which Derek so you were involved with the shift commission as a commissioner yourself and, you know, it's clear that five years past the public is still interested in coverage of the changing world of work. A lot of your writing at the Atlantic and other venues. What have we learned from the pandemic that journalists and other sources should carry with them in the future as they cover the future of work. Well, I'll echo Roy that the future is very very hard. I don't think anyone at the commission predicted that the global pandemic was going to thrust us into a work from home experiment which we would then have to reanimate in our reconsideration of the commission as we're currently doing on a zoom webinar. So, there are certain aspects of the future that were very hard to predict I would also say that there were certain aspects of the future. And that's where we thought that some people I think thought that the future would come a little bit faster than it did because the last mile problem would be solved faster so for example, I remember the conversation around self driving cars and like 2014 2015 2016 was always that self driving cars were a matter of months maybe years away now in 2023 and the cars not driving themselves at least around my neighborhood in Washington DC I think they're not driving themselves just about every neighborhood except for a few that way mo is they're not driving with in Arizona so I think that you know there's it's it's important I think when we get really excited about a technology and this is true for chat GBT as well it's true for gendered of AI to think okay don't go so far anticipating how that last mile problem is going to be solved sometimes it takes a lot more computer a lot more genius a lot more something breakthrough intelligence and it's 95% complete and make it truly 100% complete so one of the things that I guess I think about. Lastly, most is when you look at the work from home phenomenon or the remote work phenomenon, especially in a city like Washington DC which I believe where I live and I think has the highest rate of remote workers in the country. It's just amazing how many different things this touches. It changes how we work. It changes how we talk. It changes where people live there's been a lot of research on how there's been a donut that affects people leaving downtown areas moving out into suburbs, and then I think goes to the fact that technology, these kind of technologies are, they're always like a, like a like a cannonball drops in a water like the ripple effects go very very wide and it can be hard to predict Yeah, no absolutely and it's been interesting to think about the ways in which technology hype cycles have been covered and how that affects is public perception of tech and society so really appreciate those nuance takes there. Well, Derek I'll ask sort of the flip side of the question so looking back to the shift commission conversation five years ago. What what didn't you see coming that that we've experienced you alluded to some of that with the pandemic but were there other things maybe specific to how the media has interacted with with the future work and how it shaped conversations in the media that you just really didn't see. Yeah, I do think that sometimes the media can get locked into one of two different archetypes one archetype is the boosters and the other archetype is the Luddites. And again these are archetypes I'm not trying to describe every single journalist out there but I think those are two archetypes that are easily locked into. And on the booster side, you know one could say well you look at self driving cars you look at automated equipment and maybe fast food restaurants, you look at emerging technology right now like chat GPT. And you get really really excited about your predictions that it's going to replace work it's going to replace illustrators. It'll replace I saw someone talking about how easily it was how easy it was to do consulting work with Bing chat you could just, you know if you're consulting for an agriculture AI company essentially say hey compare the consequences of farming AI for the US versus China you can create a beautiful table in 45 seconds for some consulting gigs that's a week or several weeks of work. So you can get really excited about accelerating into a future that way. And you want to always pull back and think what's going to slow this down. On the other hand on the Luddite side, I think there's a lot of people who have a kind of dispositional reflex to say that any prediction that technology is going to change our lives is stupid. They look at chat GPT and they say that's not real intelligence that's just that's just a smart auto complete, or they look at at self driving cars and they say that's not going to do anything. Well in fact self driving technology is already changing the way that we drive it's just not driving itself in a fully automated kind of way. And so I tried to plot a middle path there. I would say that I think a lot of people would be shocked, not only from two years ago at the height of the pandemic but also further back when we met with the commission. The unemployment rate right now is lower than any month since 1969. It's very difficult at least to look at that particular statistic and say aha there we see the displacing effects of technology and the unemployment rate is is lower than it's been in 60 years that's that's that's extraordinary. So I think it's, I think it's always good to have a curious approach to the effects of technology on changing the way that we work how we work where we work, while also being humble about the fact that you know systems are resilient right the labor force is resilient unemployment has not skyrocketed in the face of, of better AI and better certain forms of technology it's it's in fact very very low. Absolutely. And Derek, I'm curious as you know we think about those two categories that the two archetypes that journalists in this space might fall into a flood ice and boosters. Do you have any advice or or sort of encouragement for folks in the field to think about how to help those in the media address the nuance and really get at the devil in the details that are there. What what comes to mind if you could wave of magic wand and encourage some support from the community that we've rallied behind this is cause. It's a great question. One of my answers might be might be something like remember how interesting this is. I think the Luddite view comes from a kind of hope that new technology won't be interesting that that don't don't be interested in this is sort of the subtext of a lot of writing about emerging technology. This is this isn't going to work. You shouldn't be curious about it. It's just a fraud it's just a grift it's just glorified autocomplete etc. And on the other side I guess there's something about you know acceleration is booster ism that is also not very interesting right this is going to change everything well that's not particularly curious about what it's going to change if you say it's going to change I'm not curious about what it's going to change versus what systems are going to be resilient change in response to technology. So I would I would encourage everyone and this isn't just for journalists is just for anyone sort of you know thinking their way through how technology, especially something is as frankly wondrous is large language models and this new generative that I that we're starting to see today, be curious, allow yourself to be curious allow yourself to say, I don't know what the answer is here I have lots of questions about what this is going to do to my job what it'll do to an illustrator's job or a songwriter's job or somebody works in McKenzie's job I have some interesting questions but I don't have confident conclusions I think if you pursue. You know you're once reporting through a lens of curiosity and and a sincere interest I think that can keep you away from the the rocky shoals of of booster ism and lead ism. Absolutely. Well, Derek, if it's one thing I've taken away from your writing it's solutions but also learning the right questions to ask so really grateful for your insights during the shift commission where I was of course an observer and and now as we reflect so thank you again for sharing your insights with us and I am looking forward to your book when it does come out in in the next year so thanks again Derek. And with that. Thanks Derek and with that and re back to you for our next interview with Danielle Allen. It looks like you're on mute and re. Yeah just waiting for Danielle to join us here. There she is. All right, we are we are doing this in the very much the way we did the shift commission quickly and with lots of different folks so Danielle hello welcome. It's my, it's my real pleasure to introduce Danielle Allen, who she has a very long formal title the James Bryant Conant University professor at Harvard University, and she leads the SAFRA center on ethics. Really the most important credential she has just joined the new America board, which I'm thrilled to announce, but also she ran to be the Democratic candidate for governor in Massachusetts in this most most recent round. And so Danielle I'm going to start by asking you as somebody who has long studied democracy and what strengthens democracy and civic engagement. What did you learn on the campaign trail about the future of work, how it affects what people are thinking how prominent it was at that retail level of American politics because few of us really have seen that level of American politics. I'm very happy to that's an important question. Let me just start by thanking you for taking the time to revisit the commission report, and you're right to sort of stop and take a look because things are changing so rapidly. I appreciated the comment earlier that one of the things that people weren't predicting was the return of union unionization efforts union power and I've been out of the office I'm nesting in for, you know, almost two years at this point and I just came back for this. And lo and behold I lent it to some graduate students while I was away. And so what is in here, I don't know if you can see this it's a ticket ticket line graduate students unionizing at Harvard I've got a whole box of t shirts in here so it turns out my office was being used for union organizing while I was away so it is real right It's important that we need empowerment in the workplace that people who have been in precarious jobs need to reclaim their voices. I heard that certainly on the campaign trail as well and there were lots of hotel workers on strike, while I was campaigning there were nurses on strike and nurses campaigning and over and over again they were making the same point the corporations that we work for for example with the nurses case had literally made billions in the pandemic, and that wasn't being returned to wages for workers or the quality of jobs. So that inequity in the sort of basic structure of the economy was front and center in my experience campaigning. And the other thing that we really need to focus on is a question of how to have the right sort of structures for negotiation around creation of good jobs in times of great uncertainty. So the question isn't just about jobs right it's about the quality of the job. And the quality of the job is of course about wages can you have a family sustaining compensation level. But whether or not they're actually sort of pathways of advancement again if you look at the healthcare industry there's a sort of real challenge there they're not be kind of scaffolded ways of moving up and then lastly there's a real question about time. We often talk about work life balance but I think we really need to talk about work life civic balance. So at the end of the day I think the goals and empowering economy that means to empower people in the fulsomeness of their lives including as civic agents. There's a lot of work to do but but those are some of the conversations that I heard on the campaign trail. That is, that's really interesting and I love the concept of work life civic balance that the idea that we actually need to make time for to be citizens to be active participants in our political system. The idea of what is a good job. I do think is something we did not talk about enough and we are all now thinking very hard about new America just issued a report again through the better life lab about how employers can make jobs better. And it's not just about you know are you coming back to the office are you working remotely it's a whole lot of things that make a job. It's a lot of things that are fulfilling that give you a path professional development a lot of things that frankly when I started as a leader, certainly of a nonprofit organization I would not have thought we're part of my obligation management's obligation to staff and so it was mostly you and salaries. So I also want to ask you about political realignment because, as I said, one of the things we found even five years ago was this traditional Democrats are labor and Republicans are management definitely wasn't working. How did you see those issues and were you trying to convince them voters that might have been Republican once we're now Democrats or Democrats who had turned Republican how did that cross cut your experience. I think you're right that we are in a moment where there is real realignment I think about Wes Moore's campaign in Maryland where he won not ran out rather than one on the platform of work wages and wealth. That's a really interesting fusion of what had been Democratic and Republican paradigms in effect, but that paradigm it really mattered particularly from the point of view of thinking about things like racial equity. In the United States we have the biggest black white wealth gap in the country. And a lot of people have come to recognize that at the end of the day if you're wanting to establish a foundation for flourishing for individuals for families for communities that is as much about building up assets over time it's about wealth as well as about work and wages. So I think that has allowed for a lot of new sort of thinking about you know community wealth building place based economies. You know even you know issues of property tax how those are factoring into you know who's benefiting from tax systems and the like. So there's a lot of innovation, and it's a good time politically in that regard because I think you can make real progress. Industrial policy would be another example, where you know there's a democratic version and a Republican version but but basically in some sense both sides are sort of interested in industrial policy for the first time in a long time. I'm actually sitting in Europe at the moment we've been talking to two members of the European Union who are none too thrilled about the inflation reduction act and the by American provisions right I mean it's it is a new industrial policy for us and you know we know China and frankly Europe and say other countries have been doing it but it's it's not so long ago that we were you know the apostles of free trade and globalization and in ways that that that have really changed. That's interesting the wages work in wealth and it you also think about George Bush and the ownership economy that was about you know making sure everybody had a stake in the stock market. I think that's not where we're going today so much as as you said building wealth family by family and thinking about housing thinking about narrowing the racial gap in terms of being able to own a house and community wealth building. So you mentioned racial equity and that is definitely something we did not talk nearly enough about in 2017 I think the entire country obviously through the pandemic but specifically through the murder of George Floyd and the awareness. At least among white Americans of just how great that that justice gap is in terms of physical violence but also wealth. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how that intersects with the union movement New America has also been unionized since the shift commission we have New America United. But one of the things we've seen you know unions were not good to African Americans they weren't good to women either but particularly it was, it's not necessarily a way for to achieve good jobs for people of color in this country. And does that changing do you, is there something we need to do there when we think about new modes of labor or labor power. Well that there is so much in that Emory you've given me so many different things I want to talk about my sweet heart selecting. Let me just start with the last point. For sure, I mean, I think this is one of the most important messages there can be about unions in 2023, they've come a long way. There has been a lot of diversification. There's a lot of commitment across any number of different unions to integrity to tackling for example, historical problems of or reputations for corruption. I'm going to say that that change has been accomplished everywhere, but there has truly been meaningful change the carpenters here in New England have done a great job I sat with them and they had a lot to say about the way they were scheduling childcare access for really early hours if you're a construction worker you're showing up at the job site at 5am. If you're a woman, what are you doing for childcare at 4am in the morning literally so they were thinking through questions like that and you've got SCI you are unite here for also really diverse from a workforce point of view. And the most interesting thing about connecting in particular with those really diverse unions was how much democracy questions matter to them. So that was a place where they were registering a lack of voice and choice more broadly in the political system. So there's a real interesting I think opportunity as well to think about the role of unions in helping us to renovate our democracy more broadly make sure it's fully representative, fully responsive and the like. So that's a, you know, practicing democracy, it's not going to be on the shop floor exactly where wherever you are and the point about as we pour money into many communities for infrastructure that there's a real shortage of workers in those trains and so to expand that there's absolutely you want women you want that caregivers in general, you're going to have to start providing very different kinds of benefits as as a union and that's also a way of building up a much more holistic sense I think of social needs. Well, those. Let me give you just a chance to say anything that I didn't ask you about that you particularly want to reflect on as you look forward, but both back to work five years ago but maybe looking forward to five years from now. Well, let me just make one point about technology since I know that that is also so important to this conversation. The worry about technology is about human replacing technologies. It's really important to say that there is a completely different paradigm for technological development that's possible which is about human complimenting technologies human complimenting AI. Zoom is a great example, when we're able to see each other across a great distance in this fashion. That's not replacing any existing human capability. It's expanding and building on our human capabilities. And I do believe that if we could actually figure out how to steer technological development, you know we don't let you know drug development go unregulated etc if we could figure out how to steer and govern emerging technologies in a more intentional way to be democracy supportive and to be empowering of the economy and of an empowering economy I think there's a lot that we could do. And the last point I'll make on that front to is, you know, we also have a problem. Right, and this is particularly relates to opportunities to address racial equity with the gap between the credential requirements for jobs and the credentials that are currently available in the system of our universities colleges community colleges and the like. We have a lot of qualified skilled able competent people out there who can't get jobs just because of that mismatch and that's another place actually where technology could probably assist us in accelerating sort of landscape that gets people access points to job opportunities, and then helps them have a pathway of like stackable credentials that they can move forward with. So I'll throw those two things out there for folks to chew on things I hope will be bigger in the conversation five years from now. Absolutely. Well thank you Danielle Allen I should have also mentioned Danielle's last book is democracy most recent last. Most recent book is democracy in the time of coven and I highly recommend it and Danielle thanks so much for joining us. Thank you and re great to be with you. Take good care always. Thanks so much and re fantastic comments Danielle and the comments about workplace technology being complimentary to the human being is just the entire ethos of our partnership with the world Economic Forum so gosh I found that so validating. Our next speaker is none other than Jed Colco who is the Under Secretary for Economic Affairs in the Department of Commerce so really excited to call Jed up. And we'll. There he is. Great wonderful. So great to have you with us Jed. Jed was a shift commissioner and in his current position. Jed coordinates economic analysis for the Commerce Department and provides the direction and oversight for the Census Bureau the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Chief Economist in the Office of the Under Secretary for Economic Affairs among many other distinguished roles. Jed was previously Chief Economist said indeed and work for real estate company truly among other great hats so Jed we're so honored to have your perspective with us today about the future of work and its influence and effect on the economy so thank you very much for being with us. Great. Thank you for having me and thank you for convening this event. It's great to have so many of us back together. Despite all the ways in which the world has changed to have us back together talking about these issues again. Absolutely. And Jed I think that Danielle's comments speed us up really well for a conversation about the economy. To raise opening remarks we've referenced some of the key takeaways of the shift commission in particular about the findings impact on older workers and on the rural urban divide. And we wanted to ask you Jed. Does that still hold up. How are these forces round older workers and the rural urban divide driving your thinking today as a member of the Biden administration in the Department of Commerce. What are your thoughts. Sure. So I think, as we look back over the past five years and think about really the highest levels how we talk about the labor market and the future of work differently. The most striking change to me is that so much of our conversation five years ago was about labor demand. Whether firms would need as many workers in the future, as they did in the past and what kinds of workers would firms need, and the motivating questions for the most part run the labor demand side. But over the past five years and especially with the pandemic. So many of the most important questions have switched the labor supply side. And there are more workers. What have been the reasons that have held people back from being able to participate fully in the labor market. Some of this of course during the pandemic had to do with childcare and other caregiving needs, the inability in some roles to work remotely, and therefore having to face health risks. So throughout all this period, we had long term trends like the aging of population. Starting in about after 2016, a significant decline in immigration, all of which hurt the labor supply and basically shifted the conversation of labor market from big questions about labor demand to big questions about labor supply. And whether that is, you know, just about the pandemic and a sort of temporary shift, or whether this is a, you know, somewhat of a permanent pivot. You know, time will tell. But I think this plays out, you know, both when we think about older workers and some of the geographic questions. One of the things that we focused on with the shift commission was how important older workers were both simply in the fact that the population and the workforce are aging, but also many of the trends that we focused most on such as the rise of gig work and independent working and freelancing and other alternative work arrangements were in fact more prevalent among older workers than younger and so called prime age workers. What happened during the pandemic, of course, was that older workers were most at risk from COVID itself. Often also took on many of the care burdens, particularly in taking care of others who were sick from COVID. And there were big shifts in terms of how people made decisions about retirement, enter retirement and coming back to the workforce. And in the end, the most one of the surprising trends coming out of the pandemic is that for all the discussion that we heard about early retirements during the pandemic. Workers age 55 to 64 are now, if anything, more likely to be working than they were prior to the pandemic. Unlike some younger age groups that older group, in fact, is at least as likely to work as at any time in many decades. And so, if anything that trend where older workers are going to make up more of the workforce only continued during the pandemic, though, of course, with some of the increased need for flexibility and the appeal of work that is as important to older workers as to others. And the other question you brought up Shailen on urban rural and what's happened to geography. Of course, you know the pandemic was not even in terms of its effect on places, and some of the hardest hit places during the pandemic were both those particularly dependent on certain kinds of international tourism and business travel, as well as places where more people could work from home. And therefore we saw the closure of lots of local service businesses, particularly in downtowns and other office districts that depended on people coming into the office. And where we see even today, shortfalls in jobs tend to be in some of the central parts of the most expensive markets in the country, where more people can work from home, often outside of downtown. And in some of the places, particularly dependent on international and business travel. And the other effect on geography, though, is with the rise of remote work. It has sort of changed the way in which, you know, some locations are suitable for employment. And with more people working from home in certain sectors, of course, you know, nearly two thirds of us work in occupations that cannot be done from home, but for the roughly a third who do work in occupations that can be done from home. It means both an increase in demand for housing is those people have wanted to set up home offices permanently. A shift from spending on services downtown to spending on services like restaurants, closer to home and an ability to move farther out from traditional downtowns. If you're only commuting in once or twice a week instead of every day, all of which, you know, in some ways may have been trends that predated the pandemic at a much slower pace, but clearly are ways in which the pandemic is likely to end up having a permanent change. Yeah, no, absolutely. That was lots of kernels of wisdom and insights and in your comments, Jed. And I'm curious if from your vantage point, looking at the economy for the Biden administration and just given your prior experience, if you were to hold the shift commission today, what would be top of mind for you in terms of the economy and the questions that we should be asking ourselves. So I think one critical question is thinking about the relationship between workers and employers. We are, you know, as, as I think Derek mentioned earlier, Derek to deal mentioned unemployment at 3.4%. That is the lowest in more than 50 years. Some of what we see today in terms of workplace dynamics is dependent on or arises from unemployment being very low. And tempting as it may be to point to trends in worker power or the relationship between employees and their employers. One always has to keep in mind, like how would this look different. If, if unemployment went to 6% or 7% at some point in the future, how much of what we think of as permanent new trends might unravel or look different. One of the very striking things that we saw quite early in the pandemic but persisted was a big jump in the reservation wage of workers particularly those about a college degree and the reservation wage is the level of salary that people would need to accept a new job. And that jumped particularly for workers without a college degree early on in the pandemic and stayed high. And, you know, that points to a really different set of expectations of what workers need and expect from employers. And I think understanding that that jump and what that means for workplace dynamics would be a critical question that you would be part of a sort of, you know, shift commission revisited. And the second would be around immigration and how much of our workforce and the growth of our workforce can come through workforce development domestically and what are the kinds of sectors or places that are particularly dependent on the rate of immigration. And so, of course, went down after 2016 was very low during the pandemic, getting increased last year. There are certain sectors in the economy that traditionally have been very reliant on foreign born workers, some quite low wage, some quite high wage, and given, you know, some of the broader shifts. In terms of US global relations and specifically around immigration, you know, some of these questions about, again, labor supply, and where some of the industries that the country wants to invest in will develop its workforce. I think would also be part of a shift commission discussion today, even though that wasn't as big a part of the conversation, five years ago. Absolutely gosh so so much in there. And the immigration question came to mind for me as well when we were talking about the shift from a demand focus to a labor supply focus in terms of labor, certainly with chips and science act and and the other infrastructure bills. That would be top of mind. Well, Jed, I'm curious is there is there anything else that you would share with us as we reflect on the shift commission, either what has happened over the past five years or where you think the country really needs to pay for this, we shape a better future for moving ahead. I do want to come back to childcare for a moment. The gap in childcare has long been different in the US versus other countries. The pandemic, the pandemic basically showed how big that gap was and how important it is. When we look at labor force participation rates, we see that the gap really has grown between the US and other countries for women, particularly women who are of the age to have sort of young and school aged kids. When we think about, you know, the challenges around labor supply, both short term worries around inflation and the tight labor market as well as longer term concerns around the aging population and labor supply more generally. Childcare, you know, it seems like a clear policy opportunity that, again, not a new issue in the US, but really was thrown into relief during the pandemic. I think the one other thing, and this is just a more abstract thought. One of the themes that came out of the shift commissions work, particularly in talking to people in jobs where they have less control over their sort of time and structure was how important stability was the predictability of their hours. The consistency of income. And five years ago, I thought about stability as something, you know, in some ways almost the opposite of flexibility that, you know, there were certain kinds of people that valued stability and other kinds of people that valued flexibility. The pandemic sort of scrambled that for me. And I now, you know, don't think of stability and flexibility as sort of opposites or different, but rather, you know, I now think of flexibility is something that gives people stability. And just thinking about how people both in, you know, high wage jobs that could be done remotely, as well as people in jobs that had to be in person, all value different kinds of flexibility during the pandemic. And you're in for stability, as our lives were upended that, you know, I no longer think of those as sort of different needs that sort of matter for different people, but rather, you know, is part of what people need from their work lives. Yeah, absolutely. Very relevant for the job quality movement and conversation that we've all been having and including the good jobs principles that commerce put out last year so that was fantastic insights Jed thank you so much for being here with us. Lots of lots of things for us to think about moving forward. So we'll be moving on to our next speaker. Again, a rapid set of interviews here and I just wanted to send a reminder out to the folks in the audience please do start submitting your questions to our Slido chat. And you can engage with us on Twitter using hashtag revisiting the future of work. We're at New America and our Twitter handles for speakers are also listed on our on our website so with that and re back to you. Thanks, Shailen. This is like tossing a ball back and forth virtually. So it's my pleasure to turn to our next interview with I Jen poo and before I introduce I Jen I have to say, Jen just essentially served it up by pointing out. So thinking about childcare workers and how critically important childcare workers are to caregiver participation in the workforce still mostly women but you know there I think our better life lab has said there's some 73% of Americans who have some care obligation that doesn't mean meaningful time. So I Jen was one of our original commissioners I Jen is the president of the National Domestic Workers Coalition and the founder of caring across generations. I always introduce her as the person who really has put care on the political map when you know 10 years ago. Nobody was talking about care except for a handful of feminist economists and I Jen her book, the age of dignity when I Jen when did it was published 2014 2015 2015 her book the age of dignity talks about an infrastructure of care. And I think that are now, you know, actively on the political agenda we did not get bill back better that part of it, but not for lack of trying. And we are also at a moment where as Jed reminds us we've got extremely low unemployment. We have tremendous care shortages, but they have not translated into really great jobs for caregivers. I have to say, although really the National Domestic Workers Coalition is has done a great deal and is doing a great deal to change that. I Jen, I want I guess the first thing I'm just going to ask you a general question I was sort of as you think back to 2017 pre pandemic and all the changes that have happened since. Are the other things now that surprise you, particularly in the care arena in terms of the quality of jobs for care workers the unionization, whatever it is you want to open us up with. Well, first of all, thanks so much for having us and for revisiting this conversation and I must say that if you hadn't been one of the leaders of the shift commission. I'm not sure we would have been talking about care five years ago and we were. You have been such an incredible guide holding the lantern for all of us to be able to see all the parts of the economy that we need to see and so just thank you for your leadership. And I will say that I have been surprised at the extent of progress we've been able to make in the last five years on care. I know it sounds like an optimistic stance given the depth of crisis that we're dealing with but I, you know what we're dealing with is just such deeply seated deeply held cultural norms and beliefs that have been reinforced by policy by media by culture and, and all of the sudden in the pandemic, this deeply held belief that care is a personal that if we cannot figure out how to afford care or manage it it's a personal failure right that we don't have the right job or we didn't save enough or we didn't buy the right insurance or what have you. That's sort of the dominant point of view and I think what the pandemic did was help us all collectively see that we can be doing everything in our power right, and it's still not enough because care is a shared social responsibility and really at the heart and of our economy. And so the patchwork programs and, and solutions that we had in place all this and when the bottom dropped out, we realized just how essential they are. And so we've been able to make a huge amount of progress and I just want to name that we were able to pass through the House of Representatives, a bill that included almost three quarters of a trillion dollars and investments in the care economy. And it would have been the single largest investment in the creation of good jobs that would directly benefit women and women of color in the history of the United States. So that passed now we came one United States Senator short of having it become law. But to me, that is a sign of rising that this issue is emerging as a top poll economic policy priority and we heard it from the researcher at the Department of Commerce. Right. This is not the women's agenda. This is the economic agenda. And to me, that is very hopeful. It's long overdue and I think a huge opening. I think that is the right way to see it when you think about how long, you know, major legislation takes I mean just think about Obamacare you know three presidents for presidents trying to get it through. So you're right it came it came very close and that would have been unimaginable certainly say in 2010 or 2015. So part of the the the other thing that that we are seeing thanks to in large part to your efforts is the unionization of care workers and I'd love to hear your take on where we are with that. The difference that it makes and whether those that caregiving caregiver unions are in fact making care that kind of good job that we need not just a job because but a really good job. I would say that we have a long way to go to making these jobs good jobs, and they deserve to be there is no read these are jobs of the future and as our friend Larry Katz often says they're actually triple dignity jobs. So when you improve the dignity of these jobs and make them living wage jobs with benefits and real economic security, and not only benefits the worker and her family, but it also benefits the person who's being cared for, and the family caregiver, who's able to then work and participate in all sectors of the labor market, because their loved ones are cared for. There's triple dignity impact of these jobs becoming good jobs I just wanted to name. And I would say that the average care worker across the care economy whether childcare or home health care for example still earns less than $14 per hour, but where we've seen that go higher is through unionization. And I do believe that that has been the way it's organized groups of workers applying whatever power they can aggregate to pushing for more funding to be made available for these wages to increase for training to be established and I would say that Washington State. I've worked very closely with your team at New America to really tell the story of Washington State as a model because it is so extraordinary. Washington State has a home care training fund that trains more than 45,000 home care workers per year it's the second largest educational institution in the state after the University of Washington. The starting wages for a home care worker in Washington State are above $20 an hour, and everybody has health care and retirement benefits. There's an investment in the quality of care and the quality of jobs at equal value, and it has made Washington State one of the most prepared state for the growing demand for health home health care in this country and so it is, it is clear it's proven that unionization and the creation of good jobs works, and it can be done. And, and so I, I feel like it's one of these areas of policy where there's not a lot of mysteries like we actually know what can have an impact and, and we should go for it. It's really, it's, it also directly affects the quality of care in the ways that it reduces the stress on the caregiver, our early in elementary education program had a report now probably five or six years ago but looking at childcare workers who are making so little money that they were worried about their own health care about that being, you know, caring for their own children just about paying the rent, because it was paid so little. And of course that translates as we all know as parents are taking care of anyone if you're stressed, you know you that that is is quickly communicated through so just that that degree of security has that impact. So the triple dignity jobs it's a wonderful way to think about it. Well, I'd like to ask about how you think technology intersects with caregiving and you said you know these are human jobs. These are jobs we will need even more of, but are there ways that that technology can make these better jobs this is again something that you're trying to bring on. Absolutely. And, and I just forgot to mention the earlier example of Washington State is all SCI you the service employees and a national union, really just cutting edge work on care jobs. So the, the technology point I want to pick up where Danielle left off, which is to say that these jobs have been incredibly difficult, physically, emotionally and otherwise. I do believe there's a huge role for technology to complement the role that humans play in our care infrastructure and to make some of the road tasks and the more physical tasks, much, much more sustainable. I mean if you've ever seen a Hoyer lift, it looks like something straight out of the Flintstones, like I have no idea where technology has been to help home care workers in terms of some of the more physically challenging parts, which actually have the impact of freeing care workers to provide some of the more human and emotionally intensive aspects of the work and my colleague Pollock took a group of care workers through a whole learning series about technology and robotics and artificial intelligence and the workers themselves were so clear. They were not at all threatened by robotics or artificial intelligence because they know the unique human value of their work that there's that what they provide to the people that they care for is irreplaceable. At least now, based off of what we know from the technology, and that if they could be freed up to focus there, it could be very powerful. It's just like thinking about doctors if they had to spend less time or anybody in the healthcare professions, less time filling out the forums, less time on all that work that is, as you say, wrote needs to be done. But to allow them to spend more time actually asking patients about other things in their lives than the immediate presentation. And thank you. I want to ask you one final question. If you were you were a commissioner with us and if you were setting up a shift commission today, thinking particularly about care workers but even more broadly. Are there one or two specific questions you would ask now or want us to think about now as we look forward to the next five years. I think I'm getting a lot about how we learn and how everything is mediated in ways that are sometimes very positive and sometimes not so much. And I would think about it less in terms of the questions because I think you always ask the right questions and Marie, I think more about the method of learning and I'm a Brian Stevenson fan so I would say, how do we get commissioners and people in decision making positions to be proximate and to spend a day with a home care worker spend a day with retail worker. And, and just really understand what it is that we're talking about when we're talking about technology coming into these workplaces what it is we're talking about with the challenges to unionization from a, like on the ground, as proximate as possible standpoint. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much and who thanks so much. And Shailen back to you. Thanks so much and re and gosh, so many kernels of wisdom there I certainly have the bat signal up and will be excited to learn about the project that I didn't mention on care workers and tech. We'll be shifting gears as we reflect on the shift commission for our next segment on the future for it and technology we will have two speakers so I am so thrilled to introduce Bethany Drake maples who's a researcher at Stanford University and founder of stars site AI and joining Bethany is Pamela Michigan who's a researcher at open AI. Thank you both for joining us. Thank you so much for having us. So excited to have a conversation with you all now to round up our event today, really sort of thinking about the future of work and all the technological advancements that have occurred over the past five years of course chat GPT is top of mind. For all of us these days and as spurred just an entire ocean of awareness and energy and concern and fear and hope and dreams around tech and the future of work so Bethany Pamela this questions for the both of you. We're focused on AI since before the original ships Commission, five years back. What's the price you most about AI in the last five years as experts in the field really on sort of the front lines of research. Pamela do you want to go. Sure. I think definitely how much of the sort of pace of the pace of development and speed of development, and specifically how much of it's been focused on knowledge work as opposed to sort of, I'm really being able to automate any sort of like physical labor to a lot of I think the Commission's report focused on. And I also think just even the last six weeks, sort of jump models have made and it's our binary jump between being sort of useful and actually usable in so many different contexts. So I think they're both like highlights their promise to the economy, and also risks to jobs and across like a number of different domains, and also highlights importance of other safety issues that we might want to think about, particularly ones that are very resilient, as they're attached to work and as they're sort of attached to actually using the models in context or sort of increase dependence on the models, so things like bias and generation paid speech, as well as just sort of larger questions of dependence and the importance of maintaining a human in the loop to prevent over reliance. I'm really like so happy about what I'd call like the intellectual diaspora right like the fact that so many people are thinking about it that policymakers might actually be using AI and like daily I just think that's going to be really good for just generally people understanding what's coming down the pipe. And, you know, hopefully, like with better policy creation. Yeah, I, it's going to be a wild ride, but I'm really excited that so many people are thinking about it and using it like every day which you just didn't have before. Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, Pamela, your comments about the focus on AI on knowledge work and less so the physical labor rings for me given iGen's comments about sort of the lack of attention on workplace tech, helping care workers with with their jobs and then Bethany it's really an interesting point thinking about how he'll staff and other policymakers can now tap into AI to answer questions that, well, normally they might go to places like New America for it's really sort of the changing the future for it for all. I think those lines. And this is, of course, to both of you again, if people want to understand how AI might change their work right now. Do you have suggestions for them as as experts in the field, where should they be looking what question should they be asking Interesting framing. Yeah, I have a couple of thoughts I'll start out. In general, you should just expect less noise in the system right you know better matching of roles and careers, maybe better matching of apprenticeship relationships, and hopefully better matching of like education upscaling and rescaling opportunities should also expect that we'll be able to measure more things and that's going to be like both good and bad. Workplace assessment college entrance exams, you know what we study for might fundamentally change and the mathematics behind that might fundamentally change. So yeah, again, some people will benefit from this and some people won't but I really believe that we'll be able to come to like a really great outcome. And then ultimately just imagine your most like ideal human interaction and like expect more of that if that's like a human tutor or a mentor who you really respect who knows you very deeply or some sort of like intellectual counterpart. You know what what you the best of what humans do is going to be more available for you personally. No, I think I agree with all of that and really like what you said about sort of less noise in particular and I think paying attention to sort of like the speed and base of development going and trying GBT two for instance and seeing where this technology was just three years ago, or four years ago and then sort of where it's come today by using chat GBT. I think that, yeah, I encourage all individual workers to sort of form your own opinions and sort of use the models for yourself see where they're useful see where their limitations are but also not get to bog down into where the limitations are today. And really think about how they'll, how effective they'll be as they're sort of embedded in more contextual systems systems that sort of double check for some of the easy failure modes of the models things like hallucinations. And I sort of like one your employer or your union sort of like asks for an opinion on this, or sort of considers putting it into this sort of workplace already sort of having formed some expectations of where it will be useful and where it won't and really making it sort of work for you. I mean we have to remember that like almost a billion people are already talking to chatbots like every single day even before chat GBT came on the market the show ice and replica or these like agents that people use daily. And what we've seen is that people use them as intellectual mirrors, right they use them for cognitive learning for emotional scaffolding, as well as just for those kind of like mundane like querying and like search things. So, you know, we're going to see some displacement of human relationships, we're going to see some stimulation of human relationships. And I do think it's kind of up to each individual and each organization to like help teach people how they think it might be best designed into their workflow and into their like social network. Absolutely. And, and I love the sort of framing that that you all used about, you know, AI and work actually being maybe an opportunity for more of the human presence to become more visible I think, oftentimes, you know, we see narratives sort of citing what are on us to move lose work on social automation and overall going to have more chaos counters with no people behind them and, you know, things like that so it's, it's, it's good I think for us to surface the other side of that. So, my next question here is sort of thinking a little bit more about the application of AI to work specifically. Bethany Pamela, what's what's on the horizon for us what are we in for, how do you think AI will will change the nature of work in frontline roles in particular Pamela thinking about more of those sort of physical oriented jobs maybe in retail transportation in these other industries. Definitely. I think these are some of the jobs that might change the least least in the short to medium term is the least like the sort of evidence we see so far. But I also think some of the ways they might change those jobs is kind of making them better so if we think about going from sort of more long haul trucking to short haul or the last mile trucking. That's a much better job you can sort of stay close to your family, you can sort of work shorter hours more predictable hours. And that's that I think if we can sort of figure out how to build those kinds of tools that's an exciting development. I think. Yeah, I mean, I generally I think we've seen the surface development focus a lot more on the sort of cognitive work work that can be done at a computer. And so, it means the sort of parts of those roles that are really focused on that human human interaction might, but the importance of those are of that interaction is strengthened a lot becomes rarer. And it. And there's might be that you might sort of seek growth and demand for that kind of job role. I'm like a super stoked by this possibility of like AI in the loop, you know, not necessarily any replacement but actually being like hey, you know, we're the places where a personalized agent could like really come and help you out because like, you know, the obvious thing like okay a tutor, you know like what does it mean for like that trucker if they can have a natural language conversation, and like, you know, dialogue with an agent as they drive and they help them up skill and rescale literally as they drive, you know, or what does it mean for teachers and tutors to have an AI in the loop helping them manage the classroom helping point out linguistic markers that might indicate somebody shy or something struggling, and like how they can overcome, you know, maybe even their own biases around like who talks and like what what's next. So it's going to be a wild ride. But I have a lot of hope for, you know, those people that think critically about designing AI in the loop. For sure you'll have like some some companies that feel they need to go like 100% automation and that's like maybe their fiduciary sounds cheap. But like, I really think that like, you know, humans in the loop are going to yield more value and that's just going to take a bit of like a designing tuning kind of moment or mechanism maybe that's a month maybe that's a couple years for each organization. Yeah, I love that humans in the loop that's that's just a great great sort of slogan for a lot of these for a lot of work in this space. Pamela, I have to ask you the same question we've been asking your other speakers. If we were to hold the shift Commission today. What questions would we need to ask ourselves of tech and the future of work to make sure that we're shaping a better future for that we're accomplishing some of these ideals that we've been discussing so far. What what comes to mind for the two of you. Pamela, go for it. I mean I think definitely I think how we sort of, I guess, I didn't decide to sort of be more proximate to the sort of jobs we're talking about. I think sort of what were sort of incorrect hypotheses about some of these roles five years ago that led to both misplaced investment in AI, sort of focusing more on self driving cars as opposed to this kind of knowledge work that turned out was, you know, easier to automate and more complex. I think thinking through how we sort of, how you sort of maintain interest in building skills, how you sort of build intrinsic motivation to learn because ultimately humans continue and having the skills to manage or maintain or double check the work of an AI system is going to be really important. But as a sort of promise of labor at the end of that learning goes away, it becomes much harder sort of motivate and deep like maintains our proper dependence and proper reliance on an AI system. And yeah, I think those those two to start. Totally. I mean, I feel like equity and responsibility are really important right you know we're going to see more automation. And, you know, if we don't want like a kind of of minimum machines Vonnegut like situation you know how do we, how do we bring humans along how you know what's the responsibility of employers or policymakers I don't think we figured it out. I mean, it's such a decentralized system like America, I really don't think we figured it out. So I'd ask questions about that and get really smart people, you know thinking about it now. Yeah, absolutely. I'm understanding what I do so much of our self worth is tied to work today and understanding how we actually sort of replicate that as that work changes or goes away. And how we sort of make these transitions kind to workers assuming they sort of will take place, maintain that kind of stability that it matters so much to people as the commission showed. Absolutely gosh, I have so many more questions but unfortunately we're running tight on time so I just thank you both for taking the time to speak with us. Any final take away thoughts questions that you'd share with our audience here about the future of work and an AI and tech. Sure. You know we kind of have the chance to reimagine the whole system right like right now we are living with a lot of like industrial era, like legacy decisions that were based on kind of compute, you know poverty resource poverty that we just don't experience right now. You know, and we could just replicate like what we have or we could think about like designing something that works slightly better for society. You know, that sounds far fetched it might take coordination across multiple levels but that's like what's really exciting about right now. Definitely I think, you know, every job is likely going to change the next sort of few years, and how we sort of maintain worker power in this decisions and in those discussions. And we're going to sort of make sure that we're maintaining democratic values that might, you know, shape out like a participatory methods of sort of building these systems I think will be really important. I'm excited about those efforts. Yeah, absolutely. So much for us to think about and do as we move forward in this future for a realm that we all live in so Bethany Pamela thank you again so much for joining us really appreciated your insights. For our next segment we will be turning to audience Q&A. So, again, please feel free to put your questions in the Slido chat and we will be turning them shortly. We're going to have our first question come from our colleagues at Charter Kevin Delaney is here with us but before we turn to Kevin. We do have Roy Bahat coming in one more time with a video to help close this out so I will turn to my events colleagues to pull up Roy's video and then we will turn to Kevin to kick off our Q&A. I want to end by sharing one last thought which is what this work meant to me. It gave me in my own attempt to understand where two forms of medicine that I still carry with me. The first is that instead of my usual habit which is talking trying to convince people of something and learning through debate. I, a little more often find myself listening to learn, especially listening to those who are different from me politically and ideologically different socio economically different demographically different whatever form of difference and that desire to sit down across difference and make it a successful exchange is something that I learned through the shift commission just doesn't happen automatically that we need to labor to create a container for it and to struggle to figure out the circumstances and that's something that I hope that we and new America and all of you will be doing for years to come so thank you for joining us. Fantastic. Thanks so much for a for sharing those comments with us and to kick off. We're really excited to have Kevin Delaney from Charter with us to get us going charters a fantastic resource for covering all things the future for this work I've learned so much Kevin from your team's newsletter. There's so much wisdom in this certainly encourage our colleagues in the audience to, to join in so Kevin turning to you to help kick off our Q&A period here. Any questions you have for us as we've reflected on the shift commission. Thank you so much and awesome discussion I like the note from the last panel where we had Bethany and Pamela talking about the exciting possibilities, but the importance of maintaining worker power and democratic values as we navigate this I sort of one of the things I want to say with me. I want to go back to the beginning I have a you know a question for you both and it starts with where and Marie started this conversation, and her takeaways of slide the initial one, and her first bullet point which is about the need to help them and employers central role in society. And we've seen this, particularly over the last few years there really is, is not a lot of consistency in the expectations and in the practice of what employers provide and you can think about areas like mental health, employers, most employers didn't think of themselves as mental health providers, for the most part but in fact that's become a core part of how they're able to support their, their employees childcare is an issue that's come up in almost every discussion today it's where we are where employers recognize that that they're their employees having access to good affordable childcare is key to their successes businesses, increasingly. So, I think one of the issues and this is my question to you one of the issues is that we as a society society, haven't updated the expectations of what employers need to provide to their workforces. What's the difference between what society provides the government provides what unions and other other organization provide in what employees provide. We've just sort of had this kind of seep into a world where where it's clear that there are these needs and that have intensified the last few years to support employees. But what are, what are realistic expectations, you know again in another area, speaking up on societal issues such as voting rights and reproductive rights, very few companies probably 10 years and a lot of that as part of their own responsibilities but it's clear that employees expect that of most employers these days. And then the. So what is how do we completely move this conversation forward to have a common understanding and expectation of what employers should provide and paired with that is how do we, how do we make sure that the government and our shared communal responsibility for these areas are defined and fully realized as well. And again, childcare is an issue where it's clear training is another issue where it's clear that the efforts of individual employers are not probably capable of solving the problems at scale. So I'm going to, that's my question for you expectations of employers it goes back to Anne Marie's first point. How do we move this board in concrete ways. I'll take the first crack, and I spend a lot of time thinking about this question as the head of a nonprofit. And I honestly don't understand why American business private sector, and as well as nonprofits but private sector just doesn't just rise up and demand universal healthcare and childcare I mean the tax that if we compare what companies in other countries, you know, are able to do because there's universal healthcare or childcare rather than having to pay that yourselves every year it just goes up and up and up. It really the politics of it do not make sense to me I mean I understand the insurance companies view although even there this system is so Byzantine, but I don't understand why corporate America is not demanding universal healthcare and care and infrastructure of care to level the playing field of competition with their foreign count. So that's a starting point. But the then so, so let's say, you know, we've got the politics and finally, you know, people sort of see their self interest. We're not we say this all the time we're not going to be Scandinavia we're not going to be France I mean you know the United States has, we've got the most really a kind of again a broke or Byzantine system of healthcare and a very patchy system of healthcare but as we overhaul it it won't be government provided everything it will not be huge institutions. So then I think, well, is so it'll probably be a mix where I like the idea, you know the original the public, the public option with childcare can actually provide a benefit it provides a very good benefit in Medicare that you know private companies or or sort of unions or associations have to meet. I'm particularly interested in the kind of guild model, and we did look at this in the shift commission, and we looked at the screen actors guilt. And there are others where you could imagine all nonprofit worker workers, or different kinds of nonprofit workers because there are many different kinds of nonprofits, coming together in such a way that and this is enabled by technology that they then have bargaining power with insurers caregivers of various kinds, so that it isn't up to one organization or one business, but it's not government either. And to your but you're the what's really interesting in your question is you know where are those boundaries because yes, they're still going to be family care, there should be lots of people who think who would prefer that. There should be some government, you do want employers thinking you know this is our responsibility to, to help develop our workers and help enable them to work well which is really the way way I think about it. I suspect that those boundaries will be drawn quite differently in different states and that will have a lot of experimentation, maybe at the municipal level certainly at the state level before we get to anything that looks like some kind of federal equilibrium but but Shailen you're you have a very different perspective or you come at these issues from a different place so I'd love to hear your your thoughts. Gosh, thank you and Marie and thank you for the question Kevin, I think that's really just the big, the big enchilada that we all need to be focused on is the role of employers in this. Well, you know what comes to mind for me is sort of the permeation of the job quality movement in the employer space. Last Davos, Davos 2023 that is the World Economic Forum released for the very first time a framework for job quality, the good work framework, and subsequently launched a good work alliance. The alliance of major employers and smaller ones to that are committed to enacting a lot of the principles in the good work framework and that happened on one of the most premier stages for industry leaders and policymakers to come together and think about the economy. You know, Klaus Schwab talks about this in his book on stakeholder capitalism, but really sort of thinking about an entire new paradigm for the way we do business. No pun intended, or maybe I should say pun intended there. We've seen parallel initiatives here in the United States with for example the Markle Foundation's rework America Task Force, a coalition of companies really trying to walk the walk and improving job quality and thinking about the future of work in a way that tilts the balance back where workers and employers are working together to shape the future. There have been similar efforts at the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation to really move the needle on job quality, and we've seen movement from the policy space as well. At least with Jet, we reference the good jobs principles that the Commerce Department and the Labor Department published last year, and then followed up with a toolkit to help small and medium size employers in particular, improve the quality of the jobs that they're at that have to offer the wage markers but also the non wage markers the kinds of things that our speakers were referencing today the flexibility the stability benefits paid leave caregiving support. So, I'm hopeful Kevin I'm hopeful that we'll get employers to step up and engage in in shaping a better future of work in a way that centers and respects the workers that make up some of these companies. There's a lot more work in the future and that's been my personal motivation to to sort of broker a partnership with the World Economic Forum around how workplace tech make jobs better instead of worse. How we can reach the ideals that we've we've been discussing today so those are a couple of observations that that we've seen in the Center on Education and Labor just sort of studying this space but I'm very excited to follow the job quality movement in particular in relation to employer action. There was one final development that I wanted to share out there. The Burning Glass Institute partnered with the project on the workforce at Harvard University to produce the American Opportunity Index. For the very first time, a index that allowed us to study which employers were being successful in worker mobility and which ones were not and this project was coincidentally supported by the Schultz Foundation and our venerable former colleague Tyra Mariani there so I look to developments like the American Opportunity Index the rework America Task Force to good work framework from the World Economic Forum and policy requirements but we need incentives to spur action we can't just rely on a core group of high road employers to help us along here so those are some thoughts. Great thank you both. Thank you so much Kevin. And now we'll be turning to our audience Q&A and gosh so many questions have come in and read to start us off I might read us a question and turn to you for a response and then we can we can move from there. The question that we've received is from Alex, thank you Alex and it's about ideas to counter human obsolescence as in how demand for labor can be increased as all of the developments that we've been talking about today, continue to permeate. What do you think we need to be thinking about to really center this this human role in work more visibly and more concretely as we talk about shaping the future of work what comes to mind for you. I think I should start by saying I am not worried about human obsolescence. I do think it's something we need to think about and indeed Daniel Allen talked about you know human complex technology that is complimentary to humans rather than replacing of humans absolutely. So what I see is that, even with something like chat GPT, the, you know, chat GPT is going to be able to code, or is able to ever we will have a eyes that can code, they can that can distill that can gather. All the kinds of tasks that are less creative. They require tremendous analytical intelligence, but not emotional intelligence. So what I see is that humans will still for the foreseeable future have lots of things that they can do that. Machines can do a little of I mean there there are automated pets in Japan that that seniors and engage with that we all saw the movie or many of us saw the movie her. So I'm not saying you can engage with something that is not human you can. I see a whole new world of jobs that are about investing in human flourishing, opening up. So and again, Claude Schwab wrote about talentism now five years ago, as saying that that was going to be the future rather than capitalism would be investing in human talent. I don't think of it in quite such economic terms I think about it in terms of, of, again, with the aid of technology, enabling human beings to live up to their full potential and believe me given the inequalities in our country and in the world we've got plenty of work to do there, given the number of people that don't have that opportunity. So that's that's one thing that sort of a kind of area of jobs that that I think about a lot. And again technology will help us the other is a lot of work that we do has just not been valued. So the, the obvious part is care, you know, many of us will work an eight hour day at 10 hour day a 12 hour day go home take care of whoever needs to be being cared for in your family or extended family. But that was not that's work. It just wasn't ever valued. And Danielle mentioned, you know, civic work participation in your community taking time out to answer that survey to go to a town hall. And those are, you know, those are things that human beings do a value, they're not play. Let's put it that way. And so I see a world in which maybe we'll have six hour work days or four hour work weeks or maybe even three and a half. But we'll be doing lots of other kinds of human activity again whether we think of it as work, or we think of it as valuable activity. And that the world that we're entering will make it fiscally possible for us to do that. No, absolutely. I think those are some terrific reflections and, you know, I'm just sort of struck by what Derek Thompson has written about in terms of work ism and how the connection between work and ism and spirituality even and, you know, there was an interesting piece just a couple of weeks back that really sort of called for resurgence in the spiritual movement globally in light of what's happening with the future of work so I think that's just just fascinating. I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that our team at New America is also partnering with the center on the future of being human at Arizona State University for a series of discussions, sort of small meetings where we really think about what will it mean to be a human being in 100 years if we didn't have to work. What would we do, who would want us to do what and why really thinking about these these, you know, big picture questions and in the traditional ASU ethos. Thank you, Alex for the question. We have time for a couple of more questions so I will turn on to the next one and Marie. So the next question we have here is from Greg. Thank you Greg. How will higher education need to adapt given the findings of the shift commission, especially for older workers who need to reskill. Oh gosh, love this question. Marie, to you first. Oh my well for the, you know, I spent the first 20 years of my career, first as a law school professor and then a professor of public and international affairs. You mentioned ASU and we have a partnership with ASU in part because ASU is the new American university and we're new America but also because they're innovating so much and so continually in education and they have a, you know, complete full immersion partial immersion they don't think of it as online and offline they just think about all the different ways we can learn. I think we are in for an educational revolution that is certainly comparable to adding high school which was sort of the marker between the the agricultural age and the industrial age at least in the United States and many other countries where we need it we realize that eight years of just learning to read and write. Not enough. Well, now we're going to realize that as you said there's kind of got to be rolling learning and lifelong learning I don't think quite captures it because it's more, you know, you may be learning while you're on a job, you know, for the next job. You may also be learning in very different ways I mean Kevin carry the head of our education policy program wrote a wonderful piece and it really is thought about. What about education in the humanities, how many of us wish, you know that we had we could have taken a course in art or music or literature of so many different kinds. That should not be restricted to some elite that gets to go to a liberal arts college, you know human beings the world over respond to literature and music and art and many, many different kinds of craft. And then as I think about, you know, YouTube videos now and how my children, you know, they have a universal constant university, or so I don't think we can predict, except to say, it'll get a lot cheaper. And we heard, I think it was Danielle all again who said and she's from Harvard but talking about stackable credentials, many kinds of certificates I think we like some structure I don't think that just big, you know, internet courses where you do it for your own no it's more satisfying like a game to say I'm going to learn this amount I'm going to be certified in some way, but we're just knocking on the door of an educational revolution. Absolutely. I think that's exactly spot on and just drawing on some recent research from our own center on education and labor. We just released a series of reports on how to get non degree workforce education right at community colleges and there's been so much work on affordability of community college level education and the importance of that. We're doing the promise of education and helping us reach the American dream and bringing that back to play. So I think that's really terrific and it's interesting you mentioned YouTube I I also read that Arizona State University has a new partnership with YouTube and Coursera in which many, many millions of just casual viewers who will learn about making things up on YouTube are able to now get forced credit through this partnership with Arizona State University. So truly a disruptive moment but hopefully for the better. That means my younger son is going to be PhD qualified. He spends that he has been on YouTube. Absolutely yep do enrollment 2.0 here. Well, so our next question comes from Jennifer so thank you Jennifer. So, will the future of work also require deeper human relationships in certain industries like healthcare, for example, to address the growing challenges and Jennifer cited mental health and particular human challenges needing a human touch. This is this is I know cord to so much what we do here and re thoughts on on the shifting nature of human relationships and work and what we should be thinking about. Well, and you and I've talked about this quite a bit as I define as I think about care. I think the essence of care is the relationship between the caregiver and the person who's cared for so it's not a service. We classify it as a service because we have an our economic measurements look at goods and services and how many of each are provided. A service, you know, could be feeding bathing dressing driving there are many things that go into care. That's the platform for an interaction between two human beings, and it is the nature of that interaction that matters. I often use the example of when you're bathing a child. Yes, you're bathing the child but what you're you're really doing or what you should be doing if you're you're giving good care is talking to that. You know, whether you're asking questions you're you're playing games, you're engaging with and that's true for any activity that if we think about that more broadly you can think of an entire relationship economy, and you think about all the coaches again, building human potential. There's you can have a coach for anything. Now, you know, health nutrition, work leadership, you name it, you can have a coach you can have a mentor, you can have an advisor you can have a navigator, obviously teachers. So I see a huge economy opening up that I would, it's based on the relationship between human beings carries is the biggest example perhaps now but only one. And there, I think, again, we haven't studied what makes that relationship really work and we have from different disciplines but not in the context of what that would look like as a source of value in an economy. Yeah, absolutely. I love the, the term relationship economy and it also brings me back to our, our prior question and sort of how we can operationalize this this lifelong learning but really more than that really sort of how do we build a relationship economy around self actualization in lieu of a lot of what we would do normally in the years past so I think that's really a great point and the other thing that comes to mind for me with respect to mental health in particular and and this hasn't come up as much in our conversation so I, I just wanted to name it in that many of our mental health challenges are a result of byproduct in inadvertent byproduct but a byproduct nonetheless of technology. Some of that is at work. Somebody had mentioned slack and zoom and zoom fatigue and slack fatigue and all of the pain points that arise there but also with social media and other forms of consumption the consumption economy has become very powerful and you know, just as we think about the promise of technology for work and play and and self actualization. I channel my ASU colleagues and thinking about the risks and how to mitigate those unintended risks of technology at play as well so so that comes to mind for me as well here. Our next question comes from Peter. Thank you Peter. And this is also really tied to to education and Marie so how should secondary education, in particular, career and technical education change given how technology has evolved over the past two three years so that's really sort of thinking about, you know, tech within the workforce development ecosystem community colleges and the like, and skill trades training the apprenticeship infrastructure all of the workforce development programs we have to equip folks with the skills they need for these sort of middle skill skill technical workforce jobs. And what comes to mind for you there. So I'm going to toss that one to you first Shailen you know much more about that than I do. So I'm going to have you answer and I will come in. Sure, sure. Well, I think this is really fascinating question I think I think tech in higher education has gotten a well deserved but a bad rep. We've seen MOOCs we've seen a number of hype circles cycles with online education and I think a number of observers and analysts and researchers are very skeptical about technology in the classroom. And, especially when it comes to the career technical education space for a number of these programs are shorter, more directly tied to discrete employer needs. I actually see that there's been a little bit of a lag thinking about how technology can be deployed to improve the quality of education and workforce training and CTE, and also thinking about outcomes. There's two examples that come to mind for me in particular. The first is the actual technological infrastructure of our community colleges to be able to do things like read labor market information the data that we have available about jobs, and about skills that are in demand, and use that to inform program design at the CT level, and also the infrastructure community colleges to see what happens to their graduates thereafter. Many colleges lack the infrastructure to do that and it's not at the fault of the colleges we haven't designed in that way as a country. So, you know there's limited infrastructure to track outcomes data whether it's through unemployment record wage record matches and sort of thinking about how that connects to student records and tracking salary now comes. But then there's actually the delivery of education and some of the CT programs themselves and one thing that comes to mind for me is thinking about how AR and VR has been really promoted as a tool to train in the skill trades, specifically the firefighter and sort of the safety professional space I know that has been a important use case to use tech to improve the quality of CT education at the community college level but even outside of the community college apparatus as well so those are two things that come to mind for me the data utilization of brick me colleges and the use of technology as an augmenting tool of educators in our CT and community college ecosystem. Other thoughts there and re. No, so I would, I would actually add I do I think you're right. I think there are many ways to use tech better and I just think about, you know, pilots, if you think about, you know, a pilot a civil civil civilian pilot or certainly a military pilot. And hours and simulators right there until they've anticipated what's going to happen and certainly when you think about firefighters but you think about almost anyone kind of again doing it is and do really thinking that you are doing it and then doing it is so important. I also though think we need a real attitude change toward working with our hands, rather than our heads human beings are evolved to do both, just as we're evolved to walk and we often our brains work better when we're actually walking for all sorts of reasons, but lots of philosophers have written on craft and the importance of craft and you think about, you know, you think about building, I'm always, I always say if there were, you know, some kind of huge catastrophe and civilization we're nearly wiped out, it would take a century before we need a law professor probably 10 centuries that's what I was, but you know building a house, cooking food, you know, any of those making clothes. And so I really think that that we need to understand that it is not it's not blue collar white collar it's not head versus head. So often being able to work with your hands means you have a different kind of way of thinking about things. And it makes your brain work in all sorts of great ways. And similarly, you know people who spend all their time thinking with their heads would really do well. And probably many of us might well choose if it were possible to actually learn physical craft in various ways. So I do think there, there's an attitudinal shift, maybe it will be helped if those jobs have more tech in them, but I hope that that's not what's required. Absolutely. Absolutely. Gosh, well, what a terrific conversation this has been unfortunately we're out of time but would hope that all in the audience continue to engage with us sign up for newsletters tweet us. Write us share your thoughts and read to close out any final thoughts from you on on as we reflect on the shift commission anniversary. I'm going to start again by, you know, sending our warmest thoughts to Roy, and he he was here his spirit was here and his videos and I know he really did want to be here but he did what I believe is the right thing to do he put families and friends first. So again, shout out to Kristen Sharp, who really did lead the shift commission and was very important to making it happen, and a huge thank you to Bethany and Pamela. I was fascinated taking notes at fast as you were writing, as you were talking, and I Jen and Danielle and and Derek really was a fabulous conversation and to Kevin you as well. You know, I think this that what I think of maybe in closing is the shift commission was a great thing to do to try to imagine alternative futures. We were, we knew that you do that with a dose of humility. We even so didn't come close to the pandemic. So, I think I would leave us with here too we should be grappling with what the limits of our imagination and Bethany and Pamela you said you know we can reimagine the whole system. The shift commission is shift commission teaches us anything. It's that in 2028 will be looking back thinking, God, we could have never imagined that. So with that, thanks and thanks Shaylyn to you and to Mary Alice and to all the new America team that made this possible. And it's been a pleasure having this conversation and we're grateful to all of you who are participating and watching online. Thanks so much Henry and thank you all for joining it's been a terrific conversation.