February 25, 2025 • 44 mins
This week Graham and Marty sit down with Cole Napper, VP of Research and Innovation at Lightcast and host of the Directionally Correct Podcast, to dive into groundbreaking research on workforce risk. Cole draws on his extensive people analytics experience—from multinational corporations to startups—to shed light on Lightcast’s Workforce Risk Report and its roots in earlier studies like Demographic Drought and Rising Storm.
Topics include:
• Workforce Demographics & Skills Gap: How retiring baby boomers, a shrinking Gen Z, and declining college enrollment are fueling a critical skills mismatch that could leave 85 million jobs unfilled.
• Impact of AI & Technological Change: Why AI is more about augmenting roles than replacing them, and the urgent need for upskilling and reskilling.
• Industry Examples & Organizational Response: Comparing companies like Walmart and Amazon to illustrate how different business models can face vastly different workforce risks—and why proactive talent investments matter.
• Reframing the American Dream: Rethinking the four-year degree as the sole path to success, and exploring how trades and skills-based hiring offer a more sustainable future.
Cole Napper, VP Research & Innovation, Lightcast
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Changing State of Talent
Acquisition, where your hosts,graham Thornton and Martin Credd
, share their unfiltered takeson what's happening in the world
of talent acquisition today.
Each week brings new guests whoshare their stories on the
tools, trends and technologiescurrently impacting the changing
state of talent acquisition.
Have feedback or want to jointhe show?
(00:21):
Head on over to changestateio.
And now on to this week'sepisode.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
And we're back with another episode of the Changing
State of Talent AcquisitionPodcast.
Super excited for our nextguest, Cole Knapper, VP of
Research and Innovation atLightcast, also the host of
Directionally Correct Podcast.
Cole, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Yeah, thanks for having me, Graham.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Super thrilled to have you Big fans of Lightcast
over here.
For anyone who's listened tothe podcast, you know you've had
some previous guests out here.
Before we get started, whydon't you tell us a little bit
more, Cole, about your careerjourney?
What led you to your currentrole as VP of Innovation and
Research over at Lightcast?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Yeah, so I would say I'm a people analytics guy
through and through.
So I spent most of my career asa practitioner doing people
analytics, starting out at somelarge multinationals so Texas
Instruments, PepsiCo, Toyota,Grainger and a few others, and
(01:21):
then kind of got it in thestartup world and so eventually
culminating at a peopleanalytics startup called
Orgnostic, which got acquired byCultureAmp not that long ago.
And most recently I led thepeople analytics and workforce
planning teams at FedEx, so Ihad about 50 people on my team
there and got the chance Been aLightcast customer, been a MZ
(01:44):
and Burning Glass customer inthe past and he'd been spoken at
Lightcast conference, I thinktwo or three years ago and got a
chance to join the company andI was like this is.
I mean, I've been such a fan ofthe company for so long that I
feel like this is like a once ina lifetime opportunity, and so
getting to be a VP here, reallygetting to put the work I've
(02:04):
done in people analytics thathas been internal for
organizations and getting toapply it to all of industry, is
just fascinating, and so we'vedone some really cool research
since I've been here so far.
I can't take credit for all ofit because we have such a great
team here that's doing justworld-class research and we've
got so much more cool stuffcoming down the pike as well.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Wow.
Well, I can say speaking foreveryone that's listening to the
podcast.
I think there's going to be alot of jealous minds when they
hear you say you had a team of50 people working on a team
panel analytics over at FedEx.
So I think most often it's ateam of a third of a person
working on people analytics.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
You're not wrong.
Fedex is like a monster of acompany.
Most people don't realize thatthey have like 600,000 employees
, and so 50 people is just adrop in the bucket there.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Wow, wow, that's awesome.
Well, quite an impressivebackground and I know that that
shaped a lot of yourperspectives on talent analytics
, so super excited to dive in alittle bit deeper.
You alluded to it already, cole.
So Lightcast puts out a lot ofresearch.
You have a lot of great data.
One of the things we're excitedto talk about is Lightcast
really recently made some waveswith its workforce risk outlook
(03:14):
report, and so we've heard thephrase rising storm quite a bit,
and it really finds that heyboy, a lot of these labor
shortages are putting manycompanies in the Fortune 1000 at
risk.
So, before we really dive intoit, maybe you could share a
high-level genesis ofLightcast's new workforce risk
outlook.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Yeah, well, there's kind of a pre-story to the risk
report that I think reallyshapes why this is relevant.
And so and it starts with acolleague of mine his name's Ron
Hetrick, I think a few yearsago had written a research
report called the DemographicDrought, and it started, for one
(03:55):
of the first times, one of thefew firms that started talking
about you know what's going tohappen to the labor force when
baby boomers start retiring.
And then, a few years afterthat, they published the Rising
Storm.
So this was last year and theRising Storm just blew up, and
so it was a continuation of thedemographic drought research.
But it's really difficult tosummarize the Rising Storm
(04:16):
because there was so much reallygood information in there.
But talking about rising trendslike AI, the baby boomer
retirements, the population ofcollege educated versus
non-college educated, and howthat's changing over time,
immigration impacts just avariety of impacts on the
workforce.
And it got such a positivereception last year when they
(04:38):
published that Everybody keptasking the question what does
that mean for my organization,kept asking the question what
does that mean for myorganization?
And so that was the genesis ofthe workforce risk report, where
we went through and we scoredall of the Fortune 1000
companies on exactly how is thisgoing to impact your
organization over the next fiveto 10 years.
And so it was broken down intofour different categories of how
(05:01):
their risk was qualified.
The first category was theindustry risk.
So what's going on in yourparticular industry?
Because everyone in theindustry kind of suffers from
the same problems and so someindustries are more risky than
others in terms of what they'regoing to lose.
So think of the top three mostrisky industries are hospitality
(05:23):
.
The top three most riskyindustries are hospitality,
their construction and I believeit's healthcare as well.
And then you go into the marketsupply.
So where does your companyactually operate?
So just because your industryis risky doesn't mean where you
operate necessarily is or is notrisky.
And so we analyzed everyorganization where their top
five locations that people wereemployed at their organization.
(05:45):
And then the next was lookingat the occupations within that
organization, so looking at thetop 10 occupations that a
company employs.
And so again, if you're a bighealthcare organization,
obviously we're looking atnurses and doctors and nurses,
aides and all the top 10occupations at a particular
employer and saying what is therisk associated with them for
(06:07):
their ability to staff over thenext five to 10 years.
And then the last and this iskind of a flip in terms of what
you see in most organizations isthe AI skills gap.
And in this case a lot ofpeople are like, oh, is AI going
to take my job, is it going toautomate what I do?
But we actually see this interms of optionality for
employers, because if you have ashortage of people who are
(06:30):
doing a particular job and AIcan help augment those people to
you know, one person doing thejob of two people, that's
actually a positive thing if youknow you have workforce
shortages.
So the AI skills gap some jobsare more akin to have automation
impacts than others and,frankly, if your organization AI
(06:51):
is not going to impact you atall, that actually probably
really increases your risk.
And so that's a little bit ofthe background about the
Workforce Risk Report, but ithas been a fascinating piece of
research and many, manyorganizations have had their
eyes opened to what's coming inthe next few years.
Because I think if you had tokind of distill down what the
(07:12):
findings of the report are, isthe future is not going to be
like the past.
We've never seen anything likethis in the history of the
workforce in the world.
And so, you know, birth ratesare decreasing.
The bigger generations in thepast, like the baby boomers, are
retiring.
They're being replaced bysmaller generations and there
might just not be enough peopleto do all the jobs, like there
(07:34):
always has been.
Another example is think aboutcollege education, and so in the
2008 crisis, you know manypeople had less children, right?
Well?
Guess what?
Those folks are turning 18 inthe next two to three years,
right?
Well?
That means college enrollmentsare about to plummet.
What is that going to do to thefuture of higher education, and
(07:57):
how many people are going tograduate from programs or going
to the skilled trades over thenext few years?
There's just going to be lesshuman beings that are able to
come in and replace people whoare retiring, not to mention all
the impacts that are going onright now with immigration and
all of that.
But I'll pause there because Ihave been talking for a while.
But it's some reallyfascinating research, wow.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Yeah, a lot there to unpack.
I love the simplicity of therisk index and the four major
categories that you outline.
I'm assuming, as is the casewith most simple but powerful
frameworks, it took a while tokind of distill it into those
four, but it's kind of likepeeling an onion.
I think If you're doing greatand have low risk in all four of
(08:41):
those, then it's an easy answer, and if you're doing horribly
in all four, then it's an easyanswer.
But you probably see somepretty interesting combinations
where, say, an industry isn'tparticularly high risk, maybe
it's actually very low risk, butdue to the pragmatics of where
the business is located, it'sactually a high risk business.
Or, conversely, you could havea company that hires occupations
(09:02):
that aren't particularlycompetitive and they have a good
position in the marketplace,but maybe the opportunity for AI
to disrupt that industry islower than any other industry.
So I think there's justprobably a lot of permutations
that you see, and it allows fora lot of fascinating
conversations.
I'm assuming you looked at alot more than just those four
before you landed on those fourbig buckets.
(09:23):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Yeah, we looked at a variety of different
characteristics.
Some of this is just limited tothe amount of data that's
available, and I'll say one ofthe things that we've seen is
you'll see differentpublications and they will focus
on just one component of this.
So they'll say, here are thefollowing industries with the
following risk, or here are thefollowing companies that are
(09:44):
going to be impacted by AI, andwe thought it's like, and
everybody's coming to the samekind of conclusions, but they're
not looking at this dataholistically, and so we thought
we're really the only company onearth that can combine all four
of these characteristics andwhat I'll call like hyper trends
into one and then give everyorganization and say your
(10:04):
organization, here's where youhave to worry, and because we
publish it out there foreveryone to see, you can also
worry in comparison to yourcompetitors too, and so one of
the things that we put out thereis a graph of every company in
a particular industry by therisk score and the revenue, and
so you can see not only whereyou stack up, but where do all
(10:25):
your competitors stack up aswell, and who's potentially
going to come eat your lunchover the next few years, because
they may be at less risk thanyou.
But another component is and Ithink, even the companies that
have a lower relative risk score, that's in relationship to what
they are today.
So, basically, even if yourscore which every company score
(10:47):
is above one, if your score, thescores are on one to five, one
being less risky and five beingmore risky, if you're above one,
which everyone is, that meansyou're at more risk than you are
today.
Right, and so literally everyorganization is at more risk
over the next year.
So that means that everyorganization is going to have to
do something and someorganizations are at more risk
(11:09):
than others, and that can createcompetitive situations where
some organizations can see onecompany's loss as another
company's gain.
But I would say the mostimportant thing is for
organizations to look deeplyinto their score, try to
understand it and to takeproactive steps to mitigate this
, because the people who actquicker will be the winners.
(11:31):
The other thing, and I'll sayhere too, is we scored the
Fortune 1000, but we have thisdata on virtually every large
organization much beyond theFortune 1000.
So there's a link you canactually click in the report
that can say hey, I don't see myorganization here, and
Lightcast will actually reachout to you and show your
organization's data as well.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Wow, okay, every time you respond it's like a spider
web.
I have like six more questionsI want to ask, but we'll try to
keep it focused here.
I really want to ask you somemore about the sausage making.
That goes into that score.
But maybe we'll do that offlineand keep it a little higher
level for our audience and maybeon that point we could unpack
(12:10):
some of these big risk factorsor trends that you kind of
called out.
So AI, obviously that's a hugeone.
I do think it's interestingwhat you said about it being
sort of the converse of what wetypically think about when we
think about AI.
Ai is replacing jobs.
That's bad for employees,obviously, arguably anyway, or
at least it's a risk onindicator for people.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
I'll ask you this question have you seen any
single job that has beenreplaced by AI yet?
I know that's somewhat of arhetorical question, but the
answer is it hasn't what it hasdone.
And this is we actually had aseparate piece of research
called the speed of skill change, and this is kind of AI
agnostic.
One of the things that we foundis one in four jobs has seen
(12:52):
75% of their skills change inthe last three years.
Right, and so if we're tryingto create kind of a skills-based
future or skills-based hiring,you have to realize that and
that's not just because of AIEvery job is changing, but
likely they're being augmentedby AI or AI is becoming a part
of the job rather than AIreplacing the job.
(13:12):
Because I'm actually working onsome research right now to find
is there any mythical job thathas been replaced by AI thus far
, and I'll let you know justfrom what I've found so far.
I can't find any.
Right.
I've seen these major companiesthat have published things that
have said, oh, we're laying offpeople because of AI, but it's
not because they said the AI hasautomated their job.
(13:33):
I think it's just they wantedto give a boogeyman excuse for
why they're doing layoffs.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
Yeah, that's fair.
I guess my gentle pushbackwould be I'm not sure it works
like that.
I mean, you would be closer toit than I am, but you could
imagine AI slowly replacingcertain skill sets in a job and
then, as the company has itsnormal labor cycles where they
lay off people and hire newpeople, you could argue that the
person whose job got replacedwhen they got laid off and they
didn't hire somebody.
That would be an example ofthat.
(13:59):
But sure it's not exactly likeoh, we brought in chat GPD and
then we fired 10 people.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
So I think yeah, so you're getting it, Marty, yeah,
so maybe we can.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
There's plenty to talk about with AI, but maybe we
could put a pin in that for aminute and focus on demographics
and immigration, which I thinkare closely related.
But you could tell me if youdisagree.
You covered the boomer thing.
That always struck me as likethe most obvious cliff that our
economy, not just labor marketsbut the housing market,
education, all the things youpoint out, I mean we could have
(14:30):
seen this cliff coming 30 yearsago.
The baby boomers, as the nameindicates, the biggest
generation we've seen, perhaps,I think, ever in the history of
the country.
And then the millennials thatafter them, their children
sometimes called the echo boomgeneration.
So yeah, a sizable generation,but much smaller, maybe even
half the size, you'd have totell me.
(14:52):
So we're just facing some harshrealities, it seems.
What do you say to a TAexecutive or C-suite person
who's seeing this trend andpanicking, Like, what can we do
about these demographic shifts?
And then maybe, if you havethoughts on immigration, we'd
love to hear.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
There are industries that have more like trades
workers that aren't usingknowledge worker skills.
That's where the shortage isoccurring, and so you have to
think about it in terms of.
I love the concept of.
Demographics are destiny and,like you said, we could have
known 30 years ago about thislooming problem of baby boomer
retirements.
Actually, just as a point offact, the millennial generation
(15:31):
is just as bigger or slightlybigger than the baby boomer
generation in terms of theworkforce availability.
However, they're actually notthe ones entering the workforce
anymore.
It's Gen Z, and Gen Z is much,much smaller than the baby
boomers generation that isretiring right now.
(15:51):
Over the next few years, andevery time a baby boomer retires
, let's say they had a 30%chance of and again, I don't
have these exact numbers infront of me, but let's say this
is directionally correct, ha haha ha, since that's my podcast
name.
So I would say, let's say theyhave a 30% chance of being a
college educated knowledgeworker and a 70% chance of being
some kind of worker that is,you know, in a doing physical
(16:15):
labor or in a trade profession,or maybe a business, a small
business owner, it could be, itcould be a variety of things,
right, but they're replaced by aGen Z-er who's going into the
workforce and, and that Gen Z-eris has, like, let's say, a 70%
chance of being acollege-educated person who's
looking for a knowledge work job.
And so you see, immediatelythere's an imbalance between the
(16:39):
types of people that areavailable for jobs and the types
of jobs that are available, andthis is where the skill
shortages come into play.
Now what has happened, and thisis where immigration comes into
the picture to play.
Now what has happened and thisis where immigration comes into
the picture and given.
You know, from a politicsstandpoint, I have no idea where
things are going to go over thenext few years in terms of
immigration policy, but let'sjust say, for over the last few
(17:02):
years, the number of immigrants,those are the ones that are
more likely to fill thoselow-skill, medium-skill,
trade-skill jobs, that gap.
But the gap's only going to getworse over the next few years.
If we felt like there has beenpain in the labor market for
there being a divergence betweenpeople with a college degree
and people without a collegedegree, that problem is only
(17:24):
going to get exacerbated as morebaby boomers retire and more
Gen Z enters the workforce.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
Interesting.
Let me just restate a few ofthose points just because I want
to make sure I'm understandingbut also the audience gets it.
So you introduced this conceptof workforce availability and
you made the point that babyboomers, while they're much
bigger in terms of raw numbersthan millennials, millennials
are actually the same size interms of the percentage or the
number of millennials who areworkforce ready or available for
(17:52):
the workforce.
Is this just another way ofsaying?
I mean, there's a lot of forcesthat probably went into that,
but obviously one of the bigmoments that happened during the
boomers generation was thatwomen entered the workforce in a
big way.
So that's one factor.
But when they started, muchfewer women in general work than
probably millennial women.
Is that one way ofunderstanding it?
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Oh yeah, you've definitely read through the
Rising Storm report, becausethat is in one of the later
chapters.
So well done, marty.
That is absolutely at play.
So there's a difference betweenthe amount of human beings that
are alive in a particulargeneration and the amount of
workers that are still workingin that generation, and so
that's where the gap that you'veidentified exists, and there's
(18:35):
a variety of reasons for that.
The percentage of femalesworking is definitely one of
them.
Immigration is another one.
The amount of college educatedversus non-college educated is
another.
But yeah, there's a variety ofimpacts there, but the largest
workforce that is working rightnow is actually the millennial
generation, because of theirlabor force participation rate
(18:55):
Got it.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Okay, that's helpful.
And then I guess the big lessonon the other point not to
simplify it too much is ifyou've got kids, you should
encourage them to go into thetrades and maybe not become
knowledge workers.
Is that a fair top line?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
finding yeah line finding.
One of my running jokes is ifyou are worried about being AI,
automating your job, become aplumber.
That's the last thing that AIis going to automate.
Again, I say that sort oftongue-in-cheek, but there's a
seed of truth within it, whichis, if you're an enterprising,
(19:31):
younger person today, if you'rean entrepreneur you know,
enterprising, you know, youngerperson today and you're looking
as I want to go, I want to skatewhere the puck is not going
right.
Everybody's going thisdirection and I want to kind of,
you know, go against the grainbut also be successful If you go
into a trade profession rightnow.
Yeah, my colleague, I mentionedhim earlier Ron Hedrick.
He gives a few kind of anecdotalstories on this that are based
(19:54):
in the research that you knowsomething like you know when
somebody goes, they turn 18.
And if they decided to go into atrade profession versus going
to a four-year college degreeand becoming an accountant, and
so they go into a four-yeardegree, they take out $200,000
in debt and then they get a$50,000 a year job as an
(20:14):
accountant, or they can go andbecome a trade professional,
which usually takes less thantwo years, may not even have to
take out student loans, but ifthey do, it's a very manageable
amount of money.
They graduate and they start inan $80,000 a year profession at
20 years old, right, and sothey have a headstart on their
peer, they have less debt andthey're making more money.
(20:36):
And they're also more likely,if you go fast forward a few
more years into the future, toactually own their business and
then contract out other peoplewho are doing that type of trade
skill right, and so it canactually be a quite lucrative
opportunity if you choose to gointo the right fields.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yeah, I think that's great.
So, like you know, let's tryand unpack that a little bit
more.
Or, you know, maybe just dive abit deeper into the skills
piece.
You know, first let's say welove Ron.
We've had him on the podcasttoo and, like you know, I tell
you like maybe it was two yearsago when we had him on and it
was pretty scary because he saidhey, it's about to cost $50 for
you to go out and buy acheeseburger Because we're not
(21:14):
going to be able to find peoplethat can be able to do the work.
And I would say over the lasttwo years you read the news I
think the cost of going out toeat has probably gone up quite a
bit.
And so we love Ron, and healways warned us it's not going
to be pretty.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Are there tr truffled on this cheeseburger or
something?
What?
Speaker 3 (21:37):
yeah, ron is fantastic and he has this
expression.
He says he likes to bludgeonpeople with data, and so he, he
is just so.
Uh, I mean, everything he saidis is fact.
He says is factual.
It's just he's.
You know, he tries to kind ofgen people up when he's talking
about it, so I try to be alittle bit more measured.
But yeah, absolutely Everythinghe says is factual in nature.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Oh yeah, Very much on the nose.
Well, you know on that, I guess.
So, all right, well, you know.
Talking about knowledge workers, you know, but I want to unpack
a little bit more nuance to it.
So in Lightcast's report, Ithink one of the more
eye-popping stats was that is it85 million is the number of
jobs that is probably going togo unfilled over the next five
(22:22):
years, so by 2030, just due toskills matches.
I think I'm stating that I'mremembering that stat, right,
but maybe can we unpack that alittle bit more then, right,
Because on one hand, we'resaying, hey, knowledge workers,
hey, that's a dab, we don't haveto worry about it.
I'm taking a leap there.
But let's unpack that a littlebit more, Because in five years,
hey, $85 million, that's a lotof job.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
It is a lot of job.
Well, and one thing you have tobe aware of is so that's over a
five-year period.
So if you've divided it by five, that's about 17 million jobs a
year, and given that it's onlygoing to get worse.
So I would actually say, if youlooked at it on a trend, it's
probably less jobs next year interms of the gap, but getting
more and more and more over thenext five years per year.
(23:05):
Right, and so if you thinkabout it, there's already a huge
skills gap, as it is Like.
You'll see these, you know,when the the the jolts report
comes out and you'll see thenumber of jobs that have been
created and every month, andyou'll see that there's this
huge gap between the number ofjobs that are available and the
number of people that have havegotten a job in the last month.
(23:25):
And you'll say how is thatpossible?
And everybody I talk to youknow who is unemployed, can't
find a job right now, and one ofthe reasons why that occurs is
because of this skills gap thatwe keep mentioning those jobs
that are available out therethey're tradespeople, they're
nurses, they're hospitality,they're waiters and waitresses.
There are a lot of the serviceindustry, people that you know
(23:46):
Ron talks about all the time andthe jobs that people want.
You know, maybe they want acoding job or an accounting job
or any other kind of knowledgeworker job that they're looking
to land back on their feet.
In reality, over the last fewyears those type of roles have
been contracting and so that isthe tale of two labor markets
that we talked about in ourspeed of skill change report.
(24:08):
The $85 million number it's ahuge number and again I
mentioned earlier in theconversation, we've never seen
anything like this.
This has never happened beforein history.
We're not prepared for it.
Now.
It's not to say that the futureis exactly going to be linear
like the past.
So there could be a chance thatyou know, if AI comes in and it
(24:31):
does more automation andaugmentation that I mentioned
earlier, maybe that $85 milliongoes down to $65 million or
something like that over thenext few years.
That is entirely possible.
And again, I mentioned earlierwhy the workforce risk is so
relevant is for organizations tobe proactive.
If they are more proactive,perhaps the eye-popping stat of
(24:51):
85 million jobs, maybe thatnumber will be lower because
they've done a good job ofcombining skills, combining
roles, creating the rightpipelines of talent for the
organization, recruiting peopleproactively and doing all the
right things that can helpmitigate these risks is not
necessarily a foregoneconclusion, but if you project
(25:12):
the current trends that we seeright now with the gaps that are
coming in the future, that'swhat you can expect.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
So that's great.
So I'm going to push on thisone a little bit.
So I'm going to ask twoquestions, cole.
So where do you see, or whereare we seeing, the biggest
skills mismatches?
And then maybe the rightfollow-up is how can companies
start addressing these skillsgaps?
On maybe a more practical level, let's dive into some examples
of where smarter CEOs are reallycultivating their workforce for
(25:41):
the future, or where they'retrying to help close that gap.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Yeah.
So I'll use an example from theretail industry Again.
I know you guys don't have itin front of you, but if you look
at the retail, we plotted allof the organizations again by
the risk and by the revenue Inthe top right-hand corner.
So this would be very highrevenue but also very high risk
is Walmart, all right, and ifyou look in the top left-hand
(26:07):
corner, which is very highrevenue but lower relative risk,
is Amazon.
Why is that the case?
You could look at it in avariety of ways, but largely
Amazon has structured.
They're virtually in the exactsame business as Walmart.
They're trying to get people,you know whether it be groceries
or you know grills, or you knowworkout equipment or whatever
(26:28):
it may be.
They're just trying to be theuniversal kind of commerce and
e-commerce providers.
But Walmart has a lot morebrick and mortar stores, which
means from.
If you remember the fourdifferent components of the risk
score, one of them is marketrisk.
They are very muchgeographically beholden to the
markets in which they operatebecause they have brick and
(26:49):
mortar stores.
There's a reason why, you know,when Amazon was experimenting
with creating stores a few yearsago, they literally had no
workers in those stores and itwas self-checkout and you could
find an item, you could scan itand then you would leave the
store without ever interactingwith the human being.
Everything else that they do,for the most part outside of
their distribution footprint, ise-commerce, which means that
(27:13):
they can locate those workers inthe tech hubs where there is an
abundance of talent.
So, from a market riskstandpoint, that's really the
huge difference between aWalmart and an Amazon.
They have virtually the samerevenue, virtually the same
number of employees, but becauseof the market risk, walmart is
at a much higher risk, eventhough they're in the same
industry as Amazon.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yeah, no, I mean, it definitely makes sense and I
guess I'd say so, you know.
Let's say, if you're a Walmart,then what are we doing in the
next five years to combat that?
You know, because I think youknow Walmart certainly built its
brand on like brick and mortarstores and like it's a very
different model than Amazon.
So if you're at Walmart, I'msure they're listening too.
What's next?
Speaker 3 (27:57):
What do you do to fix that?
Well, I think you're actuallyagain, a lot of these trends are
already underway and you'reseeing this, and so I'm just
going off the things I've seenin the news.
What has Walmart done recently?
They've increased their pay forall of their store workers.
Right, because what Walmartrealizes in a particular market
geography, it's a zero-sum gamefor talent.
So if you are paying, you knowI don't know their exact numbers
(28:18):
, but let's say it's $17 an hourand your competitors in fast
food are paying $12 an hour youcan take their talent.
Right.
The same thing is and I think Isaw this that they're paying
something like store managerslike $600,000 a year.
Now, I can imagine only a fewyears ago that was not the
number that they were payingbecause they know they need to
be proactive when it comes togetting the talent of the future
(28:40):
.
Another thing that, again, I'vejust seen publicized is Walmart
has been closing down a lot ofunderperforming stores and
really, really investing in theWalmartcom or I think that's
what they call it Walmartcomplatform.
Right, it's because they knowthat one of the ways of
de-risking their future isbecoming more e-commerce centric
and less brick and mortarcentric.
So those would be again.
(29:01):
Just, I mean, I don't have anyinside knowledge on Walmart
versus Amazon, but those wouldbe some things that I've just
seen from the sidelines.
That Walmart is doing proactiveand they're probably one of the
things that you'll see thatwe've noted in our report is and
this is why we included revenuein addition to risk.
(29:22):
The more revenue you have isalso the more potential you have
to lose.
But you also have somewhat of amoat for the ability to invest
proactively compared to yourpeers who maybe have less
revenue than you, and so Walmartand Amazon have somewhat of the
luxury is that they can makethose proactive investments
because they have a little bitmore cushion to deal with these
situations.
It's when you're in the lowerright-hand quadrant, which is a
low-revenue company buthigh-risk.
(29:43):
Those companies are at a realcompetitive disadvantage because
they may not be able to affordto be proactive, even if it's
existential to them.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
Yeah, fascinating.
Well, certainly, with deeppockets you can sort of plug the
holes in the boat a lot better.
But in terms of long term, Iguess we'll see what the real
strategy is for mitigating risk,because I mean, fighting a wage
war only goes so far.
I would say Okay, so maybe wecould just zoom out, because I
think you said something earlierthat was interesting to me.
You call sort of the historicalprecedent of the labor market
(30:15):
linear and that we can'tnecessarily look to the past
anymore as a model for thefuture.
I think that probably makesintuitive sense to folks, but I
think we should just spend amoment on that, because I think
we see this.
I mean, I'm not an avid consumerof labor market statistics, but
certainly most people who checkon CNN or whatever their
favorite news outlet will seenumbers get reported and
(30:37):
oftentimes there's a mismatch, Ithink, between like wow, the
economy did better than wethought, but why is it so hard
to find a job if you're aknowledge worker?
And I think those are earlyindicators of that change or
maybe that shift that you'retalking about, it used to be
that we could get a very highlevel top line number.
That said great, the economy isgood, it should be easy to find
(30:57):
a job.
Level top line number that saidgreat, the economy is good, it
should be easy to find a job.
The current moment seems muchmore complex than that, and so
if you take someone that ismaybe a software developer who
just graduated, thinking I'mgoing to easily get a job, and
they find out that actuallycompetition is quite stiff in
knowledge work, they have achoice.
Perhaps you could go back to thedrawing board and invest in a
(31:18):
trade.
That might be a good idea, butI don't know how many people
will do that.
Which brings us to how do wetake the knowledge workers we
have currently and give them theskills of the future?
And I know that's a bigquestion, but I think it's a big
question that's on the mind ofpretty much all CEOs.
Your report is telling them youguys are in trouble, all the
(31:38):
top companies have high risk.
How do you even begin toaddress that issue?
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Yeah, well, I'll say, is one of the ways that we try
to address it at Lightcast is wewant to give people the
information to make thedecisions for themselves,
because there is no universalprescription.
Every company, every humanbeing, every you know junior
career person or maybe somebodywho is at the tail end of their
career, who maybe just got laidoff, has to address the
(32:05):
situation differently.
So it's really hard to give aone size fits all answer to that
question and, frankly, I don'thave all the answers because,
again, we've never been herebefore right, and so I would say
again, the rewards are going tocome to the people who
experiment, who are proactive,who act early.
And so, as I look at this and Isay, you know, for the software
engineer example that youmentioned, who is graduating and
(32:28):
maybe there's not as many jobsout there is, you know I'm not
an economist, but I tookEconomics 101 and what they
talked about in there was supplyversus demand.
Right, what's happened is therehas increasingly been more and
more supply of softwareengineering graduates over the
last few years, and what's alsogoing on is kind of a mega trend
(32:49):
in the tech industry of lessand less demand for those same
software engineers and at acertain point you see an
inflection point.
We haven't ever seen thatinflection point before in the
last few decades, and so peoplejust aren't accustomed to it.
Right, and so they, becausethis is just pure supply and
demand at play.
And you could fast forward intothe future.
(33:10):
And let's say, if everybodystarted going into skilled and
trade and service sectorprofessional jobs and stopped
getting software engineeringdegrees, you would see the
supply and demand swing in theother direction.
And so again, I would alwaysjust say skate to where the puck
is going or where the puckisn't going, depending on what
is more advantageous for yourcareer.
(33:31):
I'll say as a side note, I'mlooking into some research right
now and it's very hard totriangulate some of these things
.
But I'm actually trying to findif we can see are there people
who've gotten college degreesthat are currently pivoting into
roles like trades professions,and how are they faring in that
process?
Is this even happening?
(33:52):
And if so, how are the peoplefaring that are doing that?
I guess I'll report back to youin like a year once I figure
out what's going on there.
But the key is, I mean, we'retrying just as much as the next
group to figure out how tonavigate this, and I might even
put the question on to you whatdo you think we should do, marty
, or what do you think we shoulddo Graham?
Speaker 2 (34:11):
I mean, I think that's probably a loaded
question.
(34:32):
I think we've always said and weprobably talked about this with
Ron there's probably a bit of astigma attached to trades in
the US, I think for the longesttime.
So many of us were growing upand it was hey, it wasn't about
are you going to go somethingwith computers, and I think you
know, because of that, that'sprobably been a bit of a stigma
to investing or taking that youknow path of trades and so I
think you know part of the, youknow part of the challenge.
You know one of the excitingthings that we're, you know,
probably see with you knowpeople like Lightcast and some
(34:53):
of the reporting is, you knowwhat you're saying is boy, you
know we're, you know we're pastthe tipping point where you want
to go to become a softwareengineer because you know
they're throwing jobs out likeit's, you know, like they're
free.
We're now at a point where, boy, like you know, your toilet
gets clogged or like a pipebursts, like you know, that's
the most lucrative job that youcan have because there's no one
(35:13):
else within a 15-mile radiusthat's going to be able to come
in and fix your plumbing orrewire electricity on your house
when fuses blow right.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Yeah, you better get on YouTube and try to figure it
out right.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
It's kind of like the foundation is kind of we've
been building to use a horriblemetaphor, I'm sure we're kind of
neglecting the foundation ofthe house, where we're putting
windows in up top and we don'tneed 100 different windows.
We still need a strongfoundation, and that's the piece
that is kind of the tippingpoint seems to be, or the
pendulum is swinging the otherway.
(35:49):
Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (35:51):
I love that metaphor and let me build on it for a
second, Something you said asecond ago, because we were
doing some research for someinvestors the other day and we
were talking about how a lot ofthe narrative around like what
is a good job and the stigmathat you mentioned about some of
the trades being negative jobsthat was based on a
(36:16):
post-industrial revolution babyboomer narrative that goes on in
this workforce, and what we areneeding right now is a new
forward-looking narrative forthe current generations to go
forward by saying here's whatthe future of work is, here's
what your opportunities looklike and here's a compelling
(36:36):
vision about how you can have agood career and a good life in
that world and as a society.
I think the research thatLightcast is trying to do is to
help drive the ability toformulate that narrative,
Because, frankly, a lot of whatthe narrative that exists right
now is just malware that's stillhanging around long after it
served its purpose.
It meant it did a great job atthe time it was formulated.
(36:59):
It has just outlived its useand we need a new one, and so I
think this research is ourability and attempt at trying to
formulate what's that narrativeof the future.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Well, I think that's super interesting, right?
And so let's tie this back tothis Walmart versus Amazon
example.
I'm curious if we can unpackthat a little bit more, right?
So, like there's also been thisnarrative about, you know, the
war for talent, right?
And I think you know we're alsosaying is like, hey, walmart
and Amazon is, you know, they'retwo big competitors, they're
going on very different paths,you know.
But at the end of the day, likeyou know, moving forward, like
(37:33):
you know, there's going to haveto be a bit more collaboration
across all organizations toaddress a pretty large, growing
problem about what jobs aregoing to be available and what,
you know, where people are goingto go work.
So, you know, I think it's notjust about changing, you know,
the narrative on trades, but Ithink there's going to need to
be a lot more collaborationbetween organizations.
You know, not just, you know,changing the narrative about
(37:55):
trades.
Does that make sense, cole?
Speaker 3 (37:58):
It makes perfect sense and I would say this is
why we focus so much on creatinga skills-based future and
skills-based hiring and evenenabling, through our products,
the ability to upskill andreskill employees.
And I love this concept ofcompetition versus kind of how
can we all be in this togetheris I would not be surprised if
(38:18):
you start to see the types ofjoint ventures in the future
between entire industries abouthow are we going to reskill our
current workers or upskill ourcurrent workers for the skills
that are needed in the future.
And so that you know, therising tide lifts all boats in
that industry.
I think that that would be onemechanism for creating kind of a
(38:40):
joint future where everybodybenefits and thrives together.
I'll say, on more of thecompetitive component, I put
this out to my colleagues theother day internally as somewhat
of a provocative statement, butI think you could also see it
happen.
Imagine in the next few years,if automation doesn't automate
enough of, like fast food forinstance, that I could see
(39:04):
restaurants giving peoplesigning bonuses and putting them
under like three-year contractdeals like an NFL player, but
for somebody who works in fastfood because from a competitive
dynamic, if, like, at a certainpoint.
You literally just have a humanbeing problem and there's not
enough human beings, and so ifyou have a human being that
works for you, you better lockthem down, and one of the ways
(39:27):
that we have as a vehicle fordoing that in the United States
is through contracts.
We have never seen in thehistory of fast food putting
people under contracts, and Ithink you're going to start to
see more experimental employmentarrangements because of what's
come in the future and again, soit's a fascinating time to be
alive, but you're right hittingthe nail on the head in terms of
(39:50):
there's collective options forhow we do this together, but
there's also competitive optionsfor how organizations navigate
this in the future.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
I think it's fascinating, Cole, what you're
saying about this idea ofneeding a new narrative.
Because we all see trends,reports and we can come up with
cool names like a risk index orwhatever it may be, and people
can kind of lose sight of what'sdriving it and what's important
.
But you're calling out, if I'munderstanding you, you're
calling out that I'm not surethis is overstating it to say
(40:19):
that the American dream isfundamentally broken from the
dream that was put forth whenthe baby boomers were coming of
age.
And if you worked hard and youhad some talent and you have a
little bit of luck perhaps, andyou went to college, you were
(40:40):
guaranteed to have a very solidupper middle class life, if not
a better one.
And it's no coincidence that Ithink millennials and Gen Z are
the first generations in a longtime where the standard of
living, earning potential,however you want to look at it,
is probably going to be lowerthan the previous generation.
And I think that's probablyjust another way of pointing out
(41:01):
that, yes, this dream thatwe've had and that we've sold,
to the extent that it was truepreviously, it's certainly not
true anymore for most people andwe're in desperate need of a
bigger narrative.
And the narrative transcendsindividual businesses, which is
why you're calling forcollective action, I think.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
So I did not say the American dream is dead and it
depends on how you define theAmerican dream Right.
Speaker 4 (41:25):
And the version that I outlined yeah, the version
that I thought you would have.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
I think there's a part of the part.
The one qualifier would make interms of the narrative you put
forward on what the Americandream is, is the part about
going to college.
Because for a long, long time,even right now, you know, a
majority of people don't go tocollege right, or don't have a
college degree or haven'tcompleted a four-year degree or
(41:48):
something like that.
They may still have two yearsin a community college, like if
you add all the different typesof college together, it is a
majority.
But if you just use, you know,let's say, a traditional
four-year college degree whenyou turn 18 years old, that is
not a majority of the population, and so you could never have
said at any point in time thatyou know the American dream was
(42:09):
only dependent on going tocollege and having a better life
.
I think the qualifier I wouldmake is there's lots of good
lives to be had out there.
You just have to be willing togo for the skills that it's
going to take to be successfulin the future.
And you know I can't comment on,you know, whether or not people
are going to make more or lessthan their parents.
I think that's on a person byperson basis and, frankly,
(42:29):
that's outside of the scope ofthe research that we've done,
and so I would just be, you know, giving my own opinions and
conjecture at that point.
But to say the American dreamis dead, I would just say the
American dream is being modifiedbefore our eyes and it's
important to have the factsabout that and then be able to
be proactive so that you canchoose the career and the skills
that you need to be successfulin the future.
(42:50):
I mean, there is a starkmessage that's being
communicated, and this data isagain things that we've never
faced in the history of, youknow, since the industrial
revolution, right, but itdoesn't mean that there's not
positive futures out there to behad for, you know, the
individuals who understandwhat's going on and take the
(43:11):
right steps and next actions.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Yeah, I think that's a much softer landing for us
Colvin.
The American dream is dead.
So I think that's a much softerlanding for us, cole, than the
American dream is dead.
So I think that's a great placefor us to put a put a pin in
today's episode.
So I'll leave it with aprobably hopefully the easiest
question of all, and you knowI'd say you know where can
people learn a little bit moreabout you and Lightcast?
Speaker 3 (43:32):
Yeah, this ended up being a little bit more
intensive a conversation than Iwas expecting, but I've enjoyed
it be a little bit moreintensive a conversation than I
was expecting, but I've enjoyedit.
So, yeah, you can find me, coleKnapper, on LinkedIn and, you
know, obviously, look intoLightcast, look into the
workforce risk, look into thedemographic, drought, the rising
storm, the speed of skillchange All of those are out
there and free and available toanyone.
You know, look into thesethings, because this, again,
(43:57):
this information is knowable.
And also you, you know, checkout directionally correct.
It's a, it's a lot more funnythan this conversation we've
just been having.
So, yeah, let's do it, and theamerican dream is not dead on
directionally correct love itall right.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
well, thanks, cole, it's been a great, uh great
episode, great conversation and,um, yeah, hey, like you know,
sometimes we like asking hardquestions, like but like, hey,
we're, we're super excited aboutthe future too and we'll link
everything from Lightcast in theshow notes per usual.
So thanks for joining.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
All right, thanks for tuning in.
As always, head on over tochangestateio or shoot us a note
on all the social media.
We'd love to hear from you andwe'll check you guys next week.
Welcome to the Changing State of Talent
Acquisition, where your hosts,graham Thornton and Martin Credd
, share their unfiltered takeson what's happening in the world
of talent acquisition today.
Each week brings new guests whoshare their stories on the
tools, trends and technologiescurrently impacting the changing
state of talent acquisition.
Have feedback or want to jointhe show?
(00:21):
Head on over to changestateio.
And now on to this week'sepisode.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
And we're back with another episode of the Changing
State of Talent AcquisitionPodcast.
Super excited for our nextguest, Cole Knapper, VP of
Research and Innovation atLightcast, also the host of
Directionally Correct Podcast.
Cole, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Yeah, thanks for having me, Graham.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Super thrilled to have you Big fans of Lightcast
over here.
For anyone who's listened tothe podcast, you know you've had
some previous guests out here.
Before we get started, whydon't you tell us a little bit
more, Cole, about your careerjourney?
What led you to your currentrole as VP of Innovation and
Research over at Lightcast?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Yeah, so I would say I'm a people analytics guy
through and through.
So I spent most of my career asa practitioner doing people
analytics, starting out at somelarge multinationals so Texas
Instruments, PepsiCo, Toyota,Grainger and a few others, and
(01:21):
then kind of got it in thestartup world and so eventually
culminating at a peopleanalytics startup called
Orgnostic, which got acquired byCultureAmp not that long ago.
And most recently I led thepeople analytics and workforce
planning teams at FedEx, so Ihad about 50 people on my team
there and got the chance Been aLightcast customer, been a MZ
(01:44):
and Burning Glass customer inthe past and he'd been spoken at
Lightcast conference, I thinktwo or three years ago and got a
chance to join the company andI was like this is.
I mean, I've been such a fan ofthe company for so long that I
feel like this is like a once ina lifetime opportunity, and so
getting to be a VP here, reallygetting to put the work I've
(02:04):
done in people analytics thathas been internal for
organizations and getting toapply it to all of industry, is
just fascinating, and so we'vedone some really cool research
since I've been here so far.
I can't take credit for all ofit because we have such a great
team here that's doing justworld-class research and we've
got so much more cool stuffcoming down the pike as well.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Wow.
Well, I can say speaking foreveryone that's listening to the
podcast.
I think there's going to be alot of jealous minds when they
hear you say you had a team of50 people working on a team
panel analytics over at FedEx.
So I think most often it's ateam of a third of a person
working on people analytics.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
You're not wrong.
Fedex is like a monster of acompany.
Most people don't realize thatthey have like 600,000 employees
, and so 50 people is just adrop in the bucket there.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Wow, wow, that's awesome.
Well, quite an impressivebackground and I know that that
shaped a lot of yourperspectives on talent analytics
, so super excited to dive in alittle bit deeper.
You alluded to it already, cole.
So Lightcast puts out a lot ofresearch.
You have a lot of great data.
One of the things we're excitedto talk about is Lightcast
really recently made some waveswith its workforce risk outlook
(03:14):
report, and so we've heard thephrase rising storm quite a bit,
and it really finds that heyboy, a lot of these labor
shortages are putting manycompanies in the Fortune 1000 at
risk.
So, before we really dive intoit, maybe you could share a
high-level genesis ofLightcast's new workforce risk
outlook.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Yeah, well, there's kind of a pre-story to the risk
report that I think reallyshapes why this is relevant.
And so and it starts with acolleague of mine his name's Ron
Hetrick, I think a few yearsago had written a research
report called the DemographicDrought, and it started, for one
(03:55):
of the first times, one of thefew firms that started talking
about you know what's going tohappen to the labor force when
baby boomers start retiring.
And then, a few years afterthat, they published the Rising
Storm.
So this was last year and theRising Storm just blew up, and
so it was a continuation of thedemographic drought research.
But it's really difficult tosummarize the Rising Storm
(04:16):
because there was so much reallygood information in there.
But talking about rising trendslike AI, the baby boomer
retirements, the population ofcollege educated versus
non-college educated, and howthat's changing over time,
immigration impacts just avariety of impacts on the
workforce.
And it got such a positivereception last year when they
(04:38):
published that Everybody keptasking the question what does
that mean for my organization,kept asking the question what
does that mean for myorganization?
And so that was the genesis ofthe workforce risk report, where
we went through and we scoredall of the Fortune 1000
companies on exactly how is thisgoing to impact your
organization over the next fiveto 10 years.
And so it was broken down intofour different categories of how
(05:01):
their risk was qualified.
The first category was theindustry risk.
So what's going on in yourparticular industry?
Because everyone in theindustry kind of suffers from
the same problems and so someindustries are more risky than
others in terms of what they'regoing to lose.
So think of the top three mostrisky industries are hospitality
(05:23):
.
The top three most riskyindustries are hospitality,
their construction and I believeit's healthcare as well.
And then you go into the marketsupply.
So where does your companyactually operate?
So just because your industryis risky doesn't mean where you
operate necessarily is or is notrisky.
And so we analyzed everyorganization where their top
five locations that people wereemployed at their organization.
(05:45):
And then the next was lookingat the occupations within that
organization, so looking at thetop 10 occupations that a
company employs.
And so again, if you're a bighealthcare organization,
obviously we're looking atnurses and doctors and nurses,
aides and all the top 10occupations at a particular
employer and saying what is therisk associated with them for
(06:07):
their ability to staff over thenext five to 10 years.
And then the last and this iskind of a flip in terms of what
you see in most organizations isthe AI skills gap.
And in this case a lot ofpeople are like, oh, is AI going
to take my job, is it going toautomate what I do?
But we actually see this interms of optionality for
employers, because if you have ashortage of people who are
(06:30):
doing a particular job and AIcan help augment those people to
you know, one person doing thejob of two people, that's
actually a positive thing if youknow you have workforce
shortages.
So the AI skills gap some jobsare more akin to have automation
impacts than others and,frankly, if your organization AI
(06:51):
is not going to impact you atall, that actually probably
really increases your risk.
And so that's a little bit ofthe background about the
Workforce Risk Report, but ithas been a fascinating piece of
research and many, manyorganizations have had their
eyes opened to what's coming inthe next few years.
Because I think if you had tokind of distill down what the
(07:12):
findings of the report are, isthe future is not going to be
like the past.
We've never seen anything likethis in the history of the
workforce in the world.
And so, you know, birth ratesare decreasing.
The bigger generations in thepast, like the baby boomers, are
retiring.
They're being replaced bysmaller generations and there
might just not be enough peopleto do all the jobs, like there
(07:34):
always has been.
Another example is think aboutcollege education, and so in the
2008 crisis, you know manypeople had less children, right?
Well?
Guess what?
Those folks are turning 18 inthe next two to three years,
right?
Well?
That means college enrollmentsare about to plummet.
What is that going to do to thefuture of higher education, and
(07:57):
how many people are going tograduate from programs or going
to the skilled trades over thenext few years?
There's just going to be lesshuman beings that are able to
come in and replace people whoare retiring, not to mention all
the impacts that are going onright now with immigration and
all of that.
But I'll pause there because Ihave been talking for a while.
But it's some reallyfascinating research, wow.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Yeah, a lot there to unpack.
I love the simplicity of therisk index and the four major
categories that you outline.
I'm assuming, as is the casewith most simple but powerful
frameworks, it took a while tokind of distill it into those
four, but it's kind of likepeeling an onion.
I think If you're doing greatand have low risk in all four of
(08:41):
those, then it's an easy answer, and if you're doing horribly
in all four, then it's an easyanswer.
But you probably see somepretty interesting combinations
where, say, an industry isn'tparticularly high risk, maybe
it's actually very low risk, butdue to the pragmatics of where
the business is located, it'sactually a high risk business.
Or, conversely, you could havea company that hires occupations
(09:02):
that aren't particularlycompetitive and they have a good
position in the marketplace,but maybe the opportunity for AI
to disrupt that industry islower than any other industry.
So I think there's justprobably a lot of permutations
that you see, and it allows fora lot of fascinating
conversations.
I'm assuming you looked at alot more than just those four
before you landed on those fourbig buckets.
(09:23):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Yeah, we looked at a variety of different
characteristics.
Some of this is just limited tothe amount of data that's
available, and I'll say one ofthe things that we've seen is
you'll see differentpublications and they will focus
on just one component of this.
So they'll say, here are thefollowing industries with the
following risk, or here are thefollowing companies that are
(09:44):
going to be impacted by AI, andwe thought it's like, and
everybody's coming to the samekind of conclusions, but they're
not looking at this dataholistically, and so we thought
we're really the only company onearth that can combine all four
of these characteristics andwhat I'll call like hyper trends
into one and then give everyorganization and say your
(10:04):
organization, here's where youhave to worry, and because we
publish it out there foreveryone to see, you can also
worry in comparison to yourcompetitors too, and so one of
the things that we put out thereis a graph of every company in
a particular industry by therisk score and the revenue, and
so you can see not only whereyou stack up, but where do all
(10:25):
your competitors stack up aswell, and who's potentially
going to come eat your lunchover the next few years, because
they may be at less risk thanyou.
But another component is and Ithink, even the companies that
have a lower relative risk score, that's in relationship to what
they are today.
So, basically, even if yourscore which every company score
(10:47):
is above one, if your score, thescores are on one to five, one
being less risky and five beingmore risky, if you're above one,
which everyone is, that meansyou're at more risk than you are
today.
Right, and so literally everyorganization is at more risk
over the next year.
So that means that everyorganization is going to have to
do something and someorganizations are at more risk
(11:09):
than others, and that can createcompetitive situations where
some organizations can see onecompany's loss as another
company's gain.
But I would say the mostimportant thing is for
organizations to look deeplyinto their score, try to
understand it and to takeproactive steps to mitigate this
, because the people who actquicker will be the winners.
(11:31):
The other thing, and I'll sayhere too, is we scored the
Fortune 1000, but we have thisdata on virtually every large
organization much beyond theFortune 1000.
So there's a link you canactually click in the report
that can say hey, I don't see myorganization here, and
Lightcast will actually reachout to you and show your
organization's data as well.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Wow, okay, every time you respond it's like a spider
web.
I have like six more questionsI want to ask, but we'll try to
keep it focused here.
I really want to ask you somemore about the sausage making.
That goes into that score.
But maybe we'll do that offlineand keep it a little higher
level for our audience and maybeon that point we could unpack
(12:10):
some of these big risk factorsor trends that you kind of
called out.
So AI, obviously that's a hugeone.
I do think it's interestingwhat you said about it being
sort of the converse of what wetypically think about when we
think about AI.
Ai is replacing jobs.
That's bad for employees,obviously, arguably anyway, or
at least it's a risk onindicator for people.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
I'll ask you this question have you seen any
single job that has beenreplaced by AI yet?
I know that's somewhat of arhetorical question, but the
answer is it hasn't what it hasdone.
And this is we actually had aseparate piece of research
called the speed of skill change, and this is kind of AI
agnostic.
One of the things that we foundis one in four jobs has seen
(12:52):
75% of their skills change inthe last three years.
Right, and so if we're tryingto create kind of a skills-based
future or skills-based hiring,you have to realize that and
that's not just because of AIEvery job is changing, but
likely they're being augmentedby AI or AI is becoming a part
of the job rather than AIreplacing the job.
(13:12):
Because I'm actually working onsome research right now to find
is there any mythical job thathas been replaced by AI thus far
, and I'll let you know justfrom what I've found so far.
I can't find any.
Right.
I've seen these major companiesthat have published things that
have said, oh, we're laying offpeople because of AI, but it's
not because they said the AI hasautomated their job.
(13:33):
I think it's just they wantedto give a boogeyman excuse for
why they're doing layoffs.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
Yeah, that's fair.
I guess my gentle pushbackwould be I'm not sure it works
like that.
I mean, you would be closer toit than I am, but you could
imagine AI slowly replacingcertain skill sets in a job and
then, as the company has itsnormal labor cycles where they
lay off people and hire newpeople, you could argue that the
person whose job got replacedwhen they got laid off and they
didn't hire somebody.
That would be an example ofthat.
(13:59):
But sure it's not exactly likeoh, we brought in chat GPD and
then we fired 10 people.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
So I think yeah, so you're getting it, Marty, yeah,
so maybe we can.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
There's plenty to talk about with AI, but maybe we
could put a pin in that for aminute and focus on demographics
and immigration, which I thinkare closely related.
But you could tell me if youdisagree.
You covered the boomer thing.
That always struck me as likethe most obvious cliff that our
economy, not just labor marketsbut the housing market,
education, all the things youpoint out, I mean we could have
(14:30):
seen this cliff coming 30 yearsago.
The baby boomers, as the nameindicates, the biggest
generation we've seen, perhaps,I think, ever in the history of
the country.
And then the millennials thatafter them, their children
sometimes called the echo boomgeneration.
So yeah, a sizable generation,but much smaller, maybe even
half the size, you'd have totell me.
(14:52):
So we're just facing some harshrealities, it seems.
What do you say to a TAexecutive or C-suite person
who's seeing this trend andpanicking, Like, what can we do
about these demographic shifts?
And then maybe, if you havethoughts on immigration, we'd
love to hear.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
There are industries that have more like trades
workers that aren't usingknowledge worker skills.
That's where the shortage isoccurring, and so you have to
think about it in terms of.
I love the concept of.
Demographics are destiny and,like you said, we could have
known 30 years ago about thislooming problem of baby boomer
retirements.
Actually, just as a point offact, the millennial generation
(15:31):
is just as bigger or slightlybigger than the baby boomer
generation in terms of theworkforce availability.
However, they're actually notthe ones entering the workforce
anymore.
It's Gen Z, and Gen Z is much,much smaller than the baby
boomers generation that isretiring right now.
(15:51):
Over the next few years, andevery time a baby boomer retires
, let's say they had a 30%chance of and again, I don't
have these exact numbers infront of me, but let's say this
is directionally correct, ha haha ha, since that's my podcast
name.
So I would say, let's say theyhave a 30% chance of being a
college educated knowledgeworker and a 70% chance of being
some kind of worker that is,you know, in a doing physical
(16:15):
labor or in a trade profession,or maybe a business, a small
business owner, it could be, itcould be a variety of things,
right, but they're replaced by aGen Z-er who's going into the
workforce and, and that Gen Z-eris has, like, let's say, a 70%
chance of being acollege-educated person who's
looking for a knowledge work job.
And so you see, immediatelythere's an imbalance between the
(16:39):
types of people that areavailable for jobs and the types
of jobs that are available, andthis is where the skill
shortages come into play.
Now what has happened, and thisis where immigration comes into
the picture to play.
Now what has happened and thisis where immigration comes into
the picture and given.
You know, from a politicsstandpoint, I have no idea where
things are going to go over thenext few years in terms of
immigration policy, but let'sjust say, for over the last few
(17:02):
years, the number of immigrants,those are the ones that are
more likely to fill thoselow-skill, medium-skill,
trade-skill jobs, that gap.
But the gap's only going to getworse over the next few years.
If we felt like there has beenpain in the labor market for
there being a divergence betweenpeople with a college degree
and people without a collegedegree, that problem is only
(17:24):
going to get exacerbated as morebaby boomers retire and more
Gen Z enters the workforce.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
Interesting.
Let me just restate a few ofthose points just because I want
to make sure I'm understandingbut also the audience gets it.
So you introduced this conceptof workforce availability and
you made the point that babyboomers, while they're much
bigger in terms of raw numbersthan millennials, millennials
are actually the same size interms of the percentage or the
number of millennials who areworkforce ready or available for
(17:52):
the workforce.
Is this just another way ofsaying?
I mean, there's a lot of forcesthat probably went into that,
but obviously one of the bigmoments that happened during the
boomers generation was thatwomen entered the workforce in a
big way.
So that's one factor.
But when they started, muchfewer women in general work than
probably millennial women.
Is that one way ofunderstanding it?
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Oh yeah, you've definitely read through the
Rising Storm report, becausethat is in one of the later
chapters.
So well done, marty.
That is absolutely at play.
So there's a difference betweenthe amount of human beings that
are alive in a particulargeneration and the amount of
workers that are still workingin that generation, and so
that's where the gap that you'veidentified exists, and there's
(18:35):
a variety of reasons for that.
The percentage of femalesworking is definitely one of
them.
Immigration is another one.
The amount of college educatedversus non-college educated is
another.
But yeah, there's a variety ofimpacts there, but the largest
workforce that is working rightnow is actually the millennial
generation, because of theirlabor force participation rate
(18:55):
Got it.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Okay, that's helpful.
And then I guess the big lessonon the other point not to
simplify it too much is ifyou've got kids, you should
encourage them to go into thetrades and maybe not become
knowledge workers.
Is that a fair top line?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
finding yeah line finding.
One of my running jokes is ifyou are worried about being AI,
automating your job, become aplumber.
That's the last thing that AIis going to automate.
Again, I say that sort oftongue-in-cheek, but there's a
seed of truth within it, whichis, if you're an enterprising,
(19:31):
younger person today, if you'rean entrepreneur you know,
enterprising, you know, youngerperson today and you're looking
as I want to go, I want to skatewhere the puck is not going
right.
Everybody's going thisdirection and I want to kind of,
you know, go against the grainbut also be successful If you go
into a trade profession rightnow.
Yeah, my colleague, I mentionedhim earlier Ron Hedrick.
He gives a few kind of anecdotalstories on this that are based
(19:54):
in the research that you knowsomething like you know when
somebody goes, they turn 18.
And if they decided to go into atrade profession versus going
to a four-year college degreeand becoming an accountant, and
so they go into a four-yeardegree, they take out $200,000
in debt and then they get a$50,000 a year job as an
(20:14):
accountant, or they can go andbecome a trade professional,
which usually takes less thantwo years, may not even have to
take out student loans, but ifthey do, it's a very manageable
amount of money.
They graduate and they start inan $80,000 a year profession at
20 years old, right, and sothey have a headstart on their
peer, they have less debt andthey're making more money.
(20:36):
And they're also more likely,if you go fast forward a few
more years into the future, toactually own their business and
then contract out other peoplewho are doing that type of trade
skill right, and so it canactually be a quite lucrative
opportunity if you choose to gointo the right fields.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yeah, I think that's great.
So, like you know, let's tryand unpack that a little bit
more.
Or, you know, maybe just dive abit deeper into the skills
piece.
You know, first let's say welove Ron.
We've had him on the podcasttoo and, like you know, I tell
you like maybe it was two yearsago when we had him on and it
was pretty scary because he saidhey, it's about to cost $50 for
you to go out and buy acheeseburger Because we're not
(21:14):
going to be able to find peoplethat can be able to do the work.
And I would say over the lasttwo years you read the news I
think the cost of going out toeat has probably gone up quite a
bit.
And so we love Ron, and healways warned us it's not going
to be pretty.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Are there tr truffled on this cheeseburger or
something?
What?
Speaker 3 (21:37):
yeah, ron is fantastic and he has this
expression.
He says he likes to bludgeonpeople with data, and so he, he
is just so.
Uh, I mean, everything he saidis is fact.
He says is factual.
It's just he's.
You know, he tries to kind ofgen people up when he's talking
about it, so I try to be alittle bit more measured.
But yeah, absolutely Everythinghe says is factual in nature.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Oh yeah, Very much on the nose.
Well, you know on that, I guess.
So, all right, well, you know.
Talking about knowledge workers, you know, but I want to unpack
a little bit more nuance to it.
So in Lightcast's report, Ithink one of the more
eye-popping stats was that is it85 million is the number of
jobs that is probably going togo unfilled over the next five
(22:22):
years, so by 2030, just due toskills matches.
I think I'm stating that I'mremembering that stat, right,
but maybe can we unpack that alittle bit more then, right,
Because on one hand, we'resaying, hey, knowledge workers,
hey, that's a dab, we don't haveto worry about it.
I'm taking a leap there.
But let's unpack that a littlebit more, Because in five years,
hey, $85 million, that's a lotof job.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
It is a lot of job.
Well, and one thing you have tobe aware of is so that's over a
five-year period.
So if you've divided it by five, that's about 17 million jobs a
year, and given that it's onlygoing to get worse.
So I would actually say, if youlooked at it on a trend, it's
probably less jobs next year interms of the gap, but getting
more and more and more over thenext five years per year.
(23:05):
Right, and so if you thinkabout it, there's already a huge
skills gap, as it is Like.
You'll see these, you know,when the the the jolts report
comes out and you'll see thenumber of jobs that have been
created and every month, andyou'll see that there's this
huge gap between the number ofjobs that are available and the
number of people that have havegotten a job in the last month.
(23:25):
And you'll say how is thatpossible?
And everybody I talk to youknow who is unemployed, can't
find a job right now, and one ofthe reasons why that occurs is
because of this skills gap thatwe keep mentioning those jobs
that are available out therethey're tradespeople, they're
nurses, they're hospitality,they're waiters and waitresses.
There are a lot of the serviceindustry, people that you know
(23:46):
Ron talks about all the time andthe jobs that people want.
You know, maybe they want acoding job or an accounting job
or any other kind of knowledgeworker job that they're looking
to land back on their feet.
In reality, over the last fewyears those type of roles have
been contracting and so that isthe tale of two labor markets
that we talked about in ourspeed of skill change report.
(24:08):
The $85 million number it's ahuge number and again I
mentioned earlier in theconversation, we've never seen
anything like this.
This has never happened beforein history.
We're not prepared for it.
Now.
It's not to say that the futureis exactly going to be linear
like the past.
So there could be a chance thatyou know, if AI comes in and it
(24:31):
does more automation andaugmentation that I mentioned
earlier, maybe that $85 milliongoes down to $65 million or
something like that over thenext few years.
That is entirely possible.
And again, I mentioned earlierwhy the workforce risk is so
relevant is for organizations tobe proactive.
If they are more proactive,perhaps the eye-popping stat of
(24:51):
85 million jobs, maybe thatnumber will be lower because
they've done a good job ofcombining skills, combining
roles, creating the rightpipelines of talent for the
organization, recruiting peopleproactively and doing all the
right things that can helpmitigate these risks is not
necessarily a foregoneconclusion, but if you project
(25:12):
the current trends that we seeright now with the gaps that are
coming in the future, that'swhat you can expect.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
So that's great.
So I'm going to push on thisone a little bit.
So I'm going to ask twoquestions, cole.
So where do you see, or whereare we seeing, the biggest
skills mismatches?
And then maybe the rightfollow-up is how can companies
start addressing these skillsgaps?
On maybe a more practical level, let's dive into some examples
of where smarter CEOs are reallycultivating their workforce for
(25:41):
the future, or where they'retrying to help close that gap.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Yeah.
So I'll use an example from theretail industry Again.
I know you guys don't have itin front of you, but if you look
at the retail, we plotted allof the organizations again by
the risk and by the revenue Inthe top right-hand corner.
So this would be very highrevenue but also very high risk
is Walmart, all right, and ifyou look in the top left-hand
(26:07):
corner, which is very highrevenue but lower relative risk,
is Amazon.
Why is that the case?
You could look at it in avariety of ways, but largely
Amazon has structured.
They're virtually in the exactsame business as Walmart.
They're trying to get people,you know whether it be groceries
or you know grills, or you knowworkout equipment or whatever
(26:28):
it may be.
They're just trying to be theuniversal kind of commerce and
e-commerce providers.
But Walmart has a lot morebrick and mortar stores, which
means from.
If you remember the fourdifferent components of the risk
score, one of them is marketrisk.
They are very muchgeographically beholden to the
markets in which they operatebecause they have brick and
(26:49):
mortar stores.
There's a reason why, you know,when Amazon was experimenting
with creating stores a few yearsago, they literally had no
workers in those stores and itwas self-checkout and you could
find an item, you could scan itand then you would leave the
store without ever interactingwith the human being.
Everything else that they do,for the most part outside of
their distribution footprint, ise-commerce, which means that
(27:13):
they can locate those workers inthe tech hubs where there is an
abundance of talent.
So, from a market riskstandpoint, that's really the
huge difference between aWalmart and an Amazon.
They have virtually the samerevenue, virtually the same
number of employees, but becauseof the market risk, walmart is
at a much higher risk, eventhough they're in the same
industry as Amazon.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yeah, no, I mean, it definitely makes sense and I
guess I'd say so, you know.
Let's say, if you're a Walmart,then what are we doing in the
next five years to combat that?
You know, because I think youknow Walmart certainly built its
brand on like brick and mortarstores and like it's a very
different model than Amazon.
So if you're at Walmart, I'msure they're listening too.
What's next?
Speaker 3 (27:57):
What do you do to fix that?
Well, I think you're actuallyagain, a lot of these trends are
already underway and you'reseeing this, and so I'm just
going off the things I've seenin the news.
What has Walmart done recently?
They've increased their pay forall of their store workers.
Right, because what Walmartrealizes in a particular market
geography, it's a zero-sum gamefor talent.
So if you are paying, you knowI don't know their exact numbers
(28:18):
, but let's say it's $17 an hourand your competitors in fast
food are paying $12 an hour youcan take their talent.
Right.
The same thing is and I think Isaw this that they're paying
something like store managerslike $600,000 a year.
Now, I can imagine only a fewyears ago that was not the
number that they were payingbecause they know they need to
be proactive when it comes togetting the talent of the future
(28:40):
.
Another thing that, again, I'vejust seen publicized is Walmart
has been closing down a lot ofunderperforming stores and
really, really investing in theWalmartcom or I think that's
what they call it Walmartcomplatform.
Right, it's because they knowthat one of the ways of
de-risking their future isbecoming more e-commerce centric
and less brick and mortarcentric.
So those would be again.
(29:01):
Just, I mean, I don't have anyinside knowledge on Walmart
versus Amazon, but those wouldbe some things that I've just
seen from the sidelines.
That Walmart is doing proactiveand they're probably one of the
things that you'll see thatwe've noted in our report is and
this is why we included revenuein addition to risk.
(29:22):
The more revenue you have isalso the more potential you have
to lose.
But you also have somewhat of amoat for the ability to invest
proactively compared to yourpeers who maybe have less
revenue than you, and so Walmartand Amazon have somewhat of the
luxury is that they can makethose proactive investments
because they have a little bitmore cushion to deal with these
situations.
It's when you're in the lowerright-hand quadrant, which is a
low-revenue company buthigh-risk.
(29:43):
Those companies are at a realcompetitive disadvantage because
they may not be able to affordto be proactive, even if it's
existential to them.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
Yeah, fascinating.
Well, certainly, with deeppockets you can sort of plug the
holes in the boat a lot better.
But in terms of long term, Iguess we'll see what the real
strategy is for mitigating risk,because I mean, fighting a wage
war only goes so far.
I would say Okay, so maybe wecould just zoom out, because I
think you said something earlierthat was interesting to me.
You call sort of the historicalprecedent of the labor market
(30:15):
linear and that we can'tnecessarily look to the past
anymore as a model for thefuture.
I think that probably makesintuitive sense to folks, but I
think we should just spend amoment on that, because I think
we see this.
I mean, I'm not an avid consumerof labor market statistics, but
certainly most people who checkon CNN or whatever their
favorite news outlet will seenumbers get reported and
(30:37):
oftentimes there's a mismatch, Ithink, between like wow, the
economy did better than wethought, but why is it so hard
to find a job if you're aknowledge worker?
And I think those are earlyindicators of that change or
maybe that shift that you'retalking about, it used to be
that we could get a very highlevel top line number.
That said great, the economy isgood, it should be easy to find
(30:57):
a job.
Level top line number that saidgreat, the economy is good, it
should be easy to find a job.
The current moment seems muchmore complex than that, and so
if you take someone that ismaybe a software developer who
just graduated, thinking I'mgoing to easily get a job, and
they find out that actuallycompetition is quite stiff in
knowledge work, they have achoice.
Perhaps you could go back to thedrawing board and invest in a
(31:18):
trade.
That might be a good idea, butI don't know how many people
will do that.
Which brings us to how do wetake the knowledge workers we
have currently and give them theskills of the future?
And I know that's a bigquestion, but I think it's a big
question that's on the mind ofpretty much all CEOs.
Your report is telling them youguys are in trouble, all the
(31:38):
top companies have high risk.
How do you even begin toaddress that issue?
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Yeah, well, I'll say, is one of the ways that we try
to address it at Lightcast is wewant to give people the
information to make thedecisions for themselves,
because there is no universalprescription.
Every company, every humanbeing, every you know junior
career person or maybe somebodywho is at the tail end of their
career, who maybe just got laidoff, has to address the
(32:05):
situation differently.
So it's really hard to give aone size fits all answer to that
question and, frankly, I don'thave all the answers because,
again, we've never been herebefore right, and so I would say
again, the rewards are going tocome to the people who
experiment, who are proactive,who act early.
And so, as I look at this and Isay, you know, for the software
engineer example that youmentioned, who is graduating and
(32:28):
maybe there's not as many jobsout there is, you know I'm not
an economist, but I tookEconomics 101 and what they
talked about in there was supplyversus demand.
Right, what's happened is therehas increasingly been more and
more supply of softwareengineering graduates over the
last few years, and what's alsogoing on is kind of a mega trend
(32:49):
in the tech industry of lessand less demand for those same
software engineers and at acertain point you see an
inflection point.
We haven't ever seen thatinflection point before in the
last few decades, and so peoplejust aren't accustomed to it.
Right, and so they, becausethis is just pure supply and
demand at play.
And you could fast forward intothe future.
(33:10):
And let's say, if everybodystarted going into skilled and
trade and service sectorprofessional jobs and stopped
getting software engineeringdegrees, you would see the
supply and demand swing in theother direction.
And so again, I would alwaysjust say skate to where the puck
is going or where the puckisn't going, depending on what
is more advantageous for yourcareer.
(33:31):
I'll say as a side note, I'mlooking into some research right
now and it's very hard totriangulate some of these things
.
But I'm actually trying to findif we can see are there people
who've gotten college degreesthat are currently pivoting into
roles like trades professions,and how are they faring in that
process?
Is this even happening?
(33:52):
And if so, how are the peoplefaring that are doing that?
I guess I'll report back to youin like a year once I figure
out what's going on there.
But the key is, I mean, we'retrying just as much as the next
group to figure out how tonavigate this, and I might even
put the question on to you whatdo you think we should do, marty
, or what do you think we shoulddo Graham?
Speaker 2 (34:11):
I mean, I think that's probably a loaded
question.
(34:32):
I think we've always said and weprobably talked about this with
Ron there's probably a bit of astigma attached to trades in
the US, I think for the longesttime.
So many of us were growing upand it was hey, it wasn't about
are you going to go somethingwith computers, and I think you
know, because of that, that'sprobably been a bit of a stigma
to investing or taking that youknow path of trades and so I
think you know part of the, youknow part of the challenge.
You know one of the excitingthings that we're, you know,
probably see with you knowpeople like Lightcast and some
(34:53):
of the reporting is, you knowwhat you're saying is boy, you
know we're, you know we're pastthe tipping point where you want
to go to become a softwareengineer because you know
they're throwing jobs out likeit's, you know, like they're
free.
We're now at a point where, boy, like you know, your toilet
gets clogged or like a pipebursts, like you know, that's
the most lucrative job that youcan have because there's no one
(35:13):
else within a 15-mile radiusthat's going to be able to come
in and fix your plumbing orrewire electricity on your house
when fuses blow right.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Yeah, you better get on YouTube and try to figure it
out right.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
It's kind of like the foundation is kind of we've
been building to use a horriblemetaphor, I'm sure we're kind of
neglecting the foundation ofthe house, where we're putting
windows in up top and we don'tneed 100 different windows.
We still need a strongfoundation, and that's the piece
that is kind of the tippingpoint seems to be, or the
pendulum is swinging the otherway.
(35:49):
Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (35:51):
I love that metaphor and let me build on it for a
second, Something you said asecond ago, because we were
doing some research for someinvestors the other day and we
were talking about how a lot ofthe narrative around like what
is a good job and the stigmathat you mentioned about some of
the trades being negative jobsthat was based on a
(36:16):
post-industrial revolution babyboomer narrative that goes on in
this workforce, and what we areneeding right now is a new
forward-looking narrative forthe current generations to go
forward by saying here's whatthe future of work is, here's
what your opportunities looklike and here's a compelling
(36:36):
vision about how you can have agood career and a good life in
that world and as a society.
I think the research thatLightcast is trying to do is to
help drive the ability toformulate that narrative,
Because, frankly, a lot of whatthe narrative that exists right
now is just malware that's stillhanging around long after it
served its purpose.
It meant it did a great job atthe time it was formulated.
(36:59):
It has just outlived its useand we need a new one, and so I
think this research is ourability and attempt at trying to
formulate what's that narrativeof the future.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Well, I think that's super interesting, right?
And so let's tie this back tothis Walmart versus Amazon
example.
I'm curious if we can unpackthat a little bit more, right?
So, like there's also been thisnarrative about, you know, the
war for talent, right?
And I think you know we're alsosaying is like, hey, walmart
and Amazon is, you know, they'retwo big competitors, they're
going on very different paths,you know.
But at the end of the day, likeyou know, moving forward, like
(37:33):
you know, there's going to haveto be a bit more collaboration
across all organizations toaddress a pretty large, growing
problem about what jobs aregoing to be available and what,
you know, where people are goingto go work.
So, you know, I think it's notjust about changing, you know,
the narrative on trades, but Ithink there's going to need to
be a lot more collaborationbetween organizations.
You know, not just, you know,changing the narrative about
(37:55):
trades.
Does that make sense, cole?
Speaker 3 (37:58):
It makes perfect sense and I would say this is
why we focus so much on creatinga skills-based future and
skills-based hiring and evenenabling, through our products,
the ability to upskill andreskill employees.
And I love this concept ofcompetition versus kind of how
can we all be in this togetheris I would not be surprised if
(38:18):
you start to see the types ofjoint ventures in the future
between entire industries abouthow are we going to reskill our
current workers or upskill ourcurrent workers for the skills
that are needed in the future.
And so that you know, therising tide lifts all boats in
that industry.
I think that that would be onemechanism for creating kind of a
(38:40):
joint future where everybodybenefits and thrives together.
I'll say, on more of thecompetitive component, I put
this out to my colleagues theother day internally as somewhat
of a provocative statement, butI think you could also see it
happen.
Imagine in the next few years,if automation doesn't automate
enough of, like fast food forinstance, that I could see
(39:04):
restaurants giving peoplesigning bonuses and putting them
under like three-year contractdeals like an NFL player, but
for somebody who works in fastfood because from a competitive
dynamic, if, like, at a certainpoint.
You literally just have a humanbeing problem and there's not
enough human beings, and so ifyou have a human being that
works for you, you better lockthem down, and one of the ways
(39:27):
that we have as a vehicle fordoing that in the United States
is through contracts.
We have never seen in thehistory of fast food putting
people under contracts, and Ithink you're going to start to
see more experimental employmentarrangements because of what's
come in the future and again, soit's a fascinating time to be
alive, but you're right hittingthe nail on the head in terms of
(39:50):
there's collective options forhow we do this together, but
there's also competitive optionsfor how organizations navigate
this in the future.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
I think it's fascinating, Cole, what you're
saying about this idea ofneeding a new narrative.
Because we all see trends,reports and we can come up with
cool names like a risk index orwhatever it may be, and people
can kind of lose sight of what'sdriving it and what's important
.
But you're calling out, if I'munderstanding you, you're
calling out that I'm not surethis is overstating it to say
(40:19):
that the American dream isfundamentally broken from the
dream that was put forth whenthe baby boomers were coming of
age.
And if you worked hard and youhad some talent and you have a
little bit of luck perhaps, andyou went to college, you were
(40:40):
guaranteed to have a very solidupper middle class life, if not
a better one.
And it's no coincidence that Ithink millennials and Gen Z are
the first generations in a longtime where the standard of
living, earning potential,however you want to look at it,
is probably going to be lowerthan the previous generation.
And I think that's probablyjust another way of pointing out
(41:01):
that, yes, this dream thatwe've had and that we've sold,
to the extent that it was truepreviously, it's certainly not
true anymore for most people andwe're in desperate need of a
bigger narrative.
And the narrative transcendsindividual businesses, which is
why you're calling forcollective action, I think.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
So I did not say the American dream is dead and it
depends on how you define theAmerican dream Right.
Speaker 4 (41:25):
And the version that I outlined yeah, the version
that I thought you would have.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
I think there's a part of the part.
The one qualifier would make interms of the narrative you put
forward on what the Americandream is, is the part about
going to college.
Because for a long, long time,even right now, you know, a
majority of people don't go tocollege right, or don't have a
college degree or haven'tcompleted a four-year degree or
(41:48):
something like that.
They may still have two yearsin a community college, like if
you add all the different typesof college together, it is a
majority.
But if you just use, you know,let's say, a traditional
four-year college degree whenyou turn 18 years old, that is
not a majority of the population, and so you could never have
said at any point in time thatyou know the American dream was
(42:09):
only dependent on going tocollege and having a better life
.
I think the qualifier I wouldmake is there's lots of good
lives to be had out there.
You just have to be willing togo for the skills that it's
going to take to be successfulin the future.
And you know I can't comment on,you know, whether or not people
are going to make more or lessthan their parents.
I think that's on a person byperson basis and, frankly,
(42:29):
that's outside of the scope ofthe research that we've done,
and so I would just be, you know, giving my own opinions and
conjecture at that point.
But to say the American dreamis dead, I would just say the
American dream is being modifiedbefore our eyes and it's
important to have the factsabout that and then be able to
be proactive so that you canchoose the career and the skills
that you need to be successfulin the future.
(42:50):
I mean, there is a starkmessage that's being
communicated, and this data isagain things that we've never
faced in the history of, youknow, since the industrial
revolution, right, but itdoesn't mean that there's not
positive futures out there to behad for, you know, the
individuals who understandwhat's going on and take the
(43:11):
right steps and next actions.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Yeah, I think that's a much softer landing for us
Colvin.
The American dream is dead.
So I think that's a much softerlanding for us, cole, than the
American dream is dead.
So I think that's a great placefor us to put a put a pin in
today's episode.
So I'll leave it with aprobably hopefully the easiest
question of all, and you knowI'd say you know where can
people learn a little bit moreabout you and Lightcast?
Speaker 3 (43:32):
Yeah, this ended up being a little bit more
intensive a conversation than Iwas expecting, but I've enjoyed
it be a little bit moreintensive a conversation than I
was expecting, but I've enjoyedit.
So, yeah, you can find me, coleKnapper, on LinkedIn and, you
know, obviously, look intoLightcast, look into the
workforce risk, look into thedemographic, drought, the rising
storm, the speed of skillchange All of those are out
there and free and available toanyone.
You know, look into thesethings, because this, again,
(43:57):
this information is knowable.
And also you, you know, checkout directionally correct.
It's a, it's a lot more funnythan this conversation we've
just been having.
So, yeah, let's do it, and theamerican dream is not dead on
directionally correct love itall right.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
well, thanks, cole, it's been a great, uh great
episode, great conversation and,um, yeah, hey, like you know,
sometimes we like asking hardquestions, like but like, hey,
we're, we're super excited aboutthe future too and we'll link
everything from Lightcast in theshow notes per usual.
So thanks for joining.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
All right, thanks for tuning in.
As always, head on over tochangestateio or shoot us a note
on all the social media.
We'd love to hear from you andwe'll check you guys next week.
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