Is a Jobs Crisis Coming? We're sitting with millions of people who are either not counted or are considered to be employed but they're not fully employed. Working Nation is a not-for-profit media enterprise to educate the people of our nation as to what I believe is the most significant issue we face and that is a potential massive structural unemployment. But then, the center of the bullseye of our mission is to then educate people across this country as to where the jobs of the future will be and what are the mitigating strategies and solutions. I really do believe this is coming on much faster and there's clearly more on the standing today than when I first started thinking about this, this start coming together, might have five and half years ago. But I'm still amazed at how little understanding there is. But also, so few people are really talking about solutions. So the two words that are associated with working nation to the greatest degree. It's pretty unique, is one solutions and two storytelling. The slope of the curve of the change in jobs and skills when measured against time has never been so steep. My belief is we can't wait around for conferences and white papers to educate the people of this country. In today's digital world in particular the power of storytelling is very powerful. So let's start with the problem as you see it and I guess where in your career did you start to be aware of what we call the potential massive unemployment caused by technology? When did you become aware of that and and why did you think it was a such a concern really? Well, it was really the entry into the Akamai world and then my active involvement for a lot of venture capital, type stuff after that and I wasn't just a passive investor, anything I'd invest in I would play a reasonably active role. So I got a very good look at how fast technology was changing the world that we're living in and one of the things being jobs. So the fact that this all came together is not that crazy. I was watching it but the other thing and I'll add really the third leg on the stool. So I've talked about my media experience, I've talked about my technology experience. The third leg on the stool would help bring this all together. My head was in 2002. Mike Milken came to me and asked me if I would invest in an online education company that he and his brother and Larry Ellison of Oracle were launching. I looked at it and I finally said to Mike, "I'll invest but only if I can go on the board and on the executive committee", because I have no idea if I'm going to make any money but I want to learn about this. The reason is, I was already net thinking about the idea of education and technology. Because my kids were going to the finest private schools in Los Angeles and five miles down the road you can find a very different circumstance. So due to my Akamai experience. So I said, okay, there are platforms out there that my kids are getting exposed to, others could get exposed to via technology. So as I said, I was already thinking about it. Mike approached me with the first one, I did go on the board and on the executive committee, I was very actively involved and stayed on the board, I think about six years, I dropped off the board like the week before. We filed to go public because I did really feel like being on another public company board. That opened up me to a lot of education technology investing over the years. So it's really those three media, technology, and education which really came together in my head and started about five and half years ago. But I've pretty much spent the bulk of all my time ever since then to focus on it. So I guess the naive question would be well, unemployment is lower than it ever has been before besides maybe World War II? So what' the problem that you see about the problem looming about unemployment and then how bad do you think that could cultivate to it? First of all, the numbers you're referring to are totally misleading, they're not representative at all. The workforce participation rate is at one of the lowest levels that it's ever been in and if you're not a participant, if you haven't looked for a job within some period of time, you are not counted in the denominator. We're sitting with millions of people who are either not counted or are considered to be employed but they're not fully employed, that individual who used to work 40 hours a week on some assembly line and all the sudden that assembly lines gone and now they're working 20 hours a week, driving Uber or whatever. They are considered employed. So the 3.7 or 3.9 and I don't know what number they're talking about now is totally misrepresents what the reality is out there today. You're concerned more around automation and assembly line jobs, these kinds of, even the jobs of drivers with driverless cars. Is that what's causing that slope of that curve to be so high? There are really four variables coming together at this all at the same time like never before in history. First is globalization. Globalization is good in terms of demand for product but also you've got workforce out there, that becomes available. The second being technology. We've talked about artificial intelligence and all kinds of other technology. Third is longevity. We keep people alive longer, you're keeping units of labor in the workforce or available for the workforce for much longer and then, the fourth variable is broken education. Particularly, when you consider education given the other three factors that are having such traumatic influence. So it's those four things coming together like never before in history is what underlies, I believe, the slope of the curve. The two other things I want to highlight in terms of what really motivates what we're doing. This time it's about the heart of America. Yes, it's also about the bottom 20 percent but this time it's also about the heart of America and the two examples I've used for years is the driverless vehicle, I've been using that example of probably over five years. I think driving for living is like the number one job in 32 states in this nation. Those are middle-class jobs and I don't know if it's five years or 10 years or 15 or 20 years, but those jobs are going to be disappearing. The other example I've used for a very long time because there's an area I'm very deeply involved in, is how a marketing department of 20 will become a marketing department of two because of data and analytics and those eight jobs disappearing are excellent white-collar middle-class and up and middle-class jobs in New York and LA and Chicago and throughout the country. Data and analytics is literally going to have that type of impact on so many different, I believe we won't be an aspect of business government of the not-for-profit world that isn't driven by data and analytics. That's the bad news in terms of jobs being lost.