Despite the strong recent employment numbers, is a labor crisis lurking?
In an episode of Real Vision’s The Interview, our founder and CEO Art Bilger shares some incredible stories from his career and explains how the lessons he learned have led him to advocate for a new way of thinking about employment. He walks Alex through the four variables he sees converging to create a potential jobs crisis and why relying on traditional employment metrics can be misleading.
WATCH: Is a jobs crisis coming?
“[T]he 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,” Art explains. “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 of a sudden, that assembly line’s gone, and now, they’re working 20 hours a week driving Uber, or whatever, they are considered employed. And so, the 3.7, or 3.9 — I don’t know what number they’re talking about now totally misrepresents what the reality is out there today.”
