This week on Work in Progress, I sit down with Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, to discuss the reasons why there are seven million open jobs in this country that employers are having a hard time filling, despite the low unemployment rate.
“A lot of people, I believe, are incorrectly focusing too much on trade as the culprit rather than on technology as the culprit,” says Haass. He believes looking in the wrong place for a reason could create even bigger problems.
“The economic stakes are enormous.”
“This is a class of problems I call ‘slow-motion crises.’ I would describe global climate change that way. The deficit and debt are that way,” he says. “And the problem with slow-motion crises is they rarely generate the urgency that is needed for action before it’s too late. By the time the urgency appears, most of the good options or long since gone.”
So how best do we, as a nation, prepare our workers for the changes in the workplace caused by rapidly-changing technology? Now and in the future?
Find out how Richard Haass answers these questions in this episode of Work in Progress.
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We hope you enjoy the conversation.
Episode 109: Preparing Workers: The Economic Stakes are Enormous
Host: Ramona Schindelheim, WorkingNation Editor-in-Chief
Producer: Anny Celsi
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch, Melissa Panzer, and Ramona Schindelheim
Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0.