Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Speaker 1: Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. Tomorrow, we get update on
Speaker 1: the work world, specifically the labor market that closely watched
Speaker 1: monthly jobs report from the US Labor Department. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about what's going on. Ian Siegel is with US, co
Speaker 1: founder and CEO of the online employment marketplace. We're talking
Speaker 1: about ZIP recruiter joining us on the phone from Santa Monica.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about work and so on and
Speaker 1: so forth. But I do wonder, Um, this virus, how
Speaker 1: is it, I fit at all impacting your world? Well,
Speaker 1: obviously this is something that we're watching very closely, and
Speaker 1: so far it hasn't directly impacted the number of jobs
Speaker 1: that are being posted, but certainly it's impacting the practices
Speaker 1: that employers are using as they interview candidates. Um, Video
Speaker 1: interviewing is on a steep rise right now as employers
Speaker 1: try to cut down the number of visitors who comes
Speaker 1: through their actual physical locations. Yeah, it's sort of amazing.
Speaker 1: We had a great story, one of the most stories
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg this entire week was about how Wall Street poaching,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of in the post bonus season, which
Speaker 1: you know well is you know, essentially ground to a halt. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, all that sort of lateral movement or a
Speaker 1: lot of that literal movement because of that, you know,
Speaker 1: not being able to do that sort of final interview
Speaker 1: where you bring somebody in and you show them around
Speaker 1: and they shake hands. I mean, we're not even shaking
Speaker 1: hands with people we know at this point in some ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is going to be really interesting because
Speaker 1: one of the big themes in modern recruiting is around
Speaker 1: flexibility at the workplace and whether or not companies are
Speaker 1: going to allow telecommuting as an example, and the coronavirus
Speaker 1: almost as a silver lining, is going to give us
Speaker 1: a really interesting opportunity to study many companies ability to
Speaker 1: allow telecommuting as an option. It's a great point. It's
Speaker 1: a great point. You know. It's funny we two had
Speaker 1: a UM Bureau of Labor Statistics or Labor Department statistic
Speaker 1: earlier in the weekend I just talked about. I think
Speaker 1: I think it was roughly a quarter of people can
Speaker 1: actually work from home. So it's not like, you know,
Speaker 1: we think the world has moved so easily into being
Speaker 1: able to do that. There's a lot of jobs that
Speaker 1: you can't do from home, you know. All right, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about that monthly job report. And I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if Ian you're already starting to see kind of you know,
Speaker 1: your view on the world in two buckets, the pre
Speaker 1: virus concerns versus now what you've seen as of late.
Speaker 1: So I guess I'm wondering, what was the momentum before
Speaker 1: um the virus worry seem to overtake economic concerns, market concerns.
Speaker 1: What were you seeing in terms of labor market momentum
Speaker 1: and what are you seeing now? Well, first this was,
Speaker 1: I mean where this has been the most tremendous run
Speaker 1: of the job market over a ten year period that
Speaker 1: any of us have seen in our lifetime. The resiliency
Speaker 1: of this job market has been extraordinary. And it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what's happening in politics, It doesn't seem to matter
Speaker 1: what's happening with international trade. This job market has just
Speaker 1: consistently plowed along. Now we have a pandemic, and really
Speaker 1: information about the pandemic is just starting to be collected.
Speaker 1: So I don't think we're going to see any impact
Speaker 1: in the previous month's job report. I think this is
Speaker 1: the month where we're going to start to really see
Speaker 1: whether or not there's going to be impact. There's surveys
Speaker 1: being done in our industry left and right right now,
Speaker 1: and multiple employers are already saying it's starting to affect
Speaker 1: their hiring plans, although they are using the word moderately.
Speaker 1: So far, moderately is the word of the day. But
Speaker 1: having said that, so you said, you know you're seeing
Speaker 1: more people do in terms of interviews online, but are
Speaker 1: you seeing less postings happen yet? Are not yet? No?
Speaker 1: So far, posting volume has stayed consistent. It's something we
Speaker 1: watch closely, literally on a daily basis, and so we
Speaker 1: aren't seeing the direct impact on hiring. However, a multitude
Speaker 1: of employers are going public with what their coronavirus response
Speaker 1: plans are, and it's everything from living limiting travel for
Speaker 1: their employees to refusing to let candidates come into the
Speaker 1: offices for final interviews. As we were discussing the requiring
Speaker 1: that they'd be done over say video. It will be
Speaker 1: interesting to see whether or not that eliminates some percentage
Speaker 1: of hiring or merely slows it down, right, I think
Speaker 1: we're all going to be developing new muscle and how
Speaker 1: we recruit without having the opportunity to be physically co
Speaker 1: located with the candidate. Well, and as you said, Ian
Speaker 1: and you guys have done a lot of work recently
Speaker 1: as I understand it, around AI and the and the
Speaker 1: future of work. How does that play into the current environment.
Speaker 1: And you alluded to earlier this idea that you know,
Speaker 1: this is a little bit of a test case in
Speaker 1: terms of both where we work and how we work.
Speaker 1: How does that sort of synthesize with some of your
Speaker 1: findings in your recent studies. Well, it's important note that
Speaker 1: millennials is a generation prioritize flexibility and telecommuning as their
Speaker 1: number two key requirement when they consider a job. Number
Speaker 1: one is salary. So this is a generation that desperately
Speaker 1: wants the opportunity to work from home, and the tools
Speaker 1: have evolved, whether it's a video interviewing or it's communication
Speaker 1: platforms like Slack or collaborative docs that can be worked
Speaker 1: on by a group of people together that Google provides. Really,
Speaker 1: you're in your living in a time where it's easier
Speaker 1: to be telecommuting than it ever has been before. But uh,
Speaker 1: companies are really reluctant to allow their employees to do it.
Speaker 1: And whether that's because of strong intuition or whether that's
Speaker 1: just because of tradition. I think we're actually about to
Speaker 1: find out, because coronavirus is effectively leading to a grand
Speaker 1: experiment where a lot of companies and really big companies
Speaker 1: are starting to loosen the reins on requiring employees to
Speaker 1: come in. So we're going to find out there's this
Speaker 1: may be a huge shift in how work happens in
Speaker 1: America over the next nine months. You are listening to
Speaker 1: Bloomberg business Week. Let's continue our conversation with Ian Siegel,
Speaker 1: co founder and CEO of zip Recruiter, joining us on
Speaker 1: the phone from Lovely Santa Monica. So, Ian, I want
Speaker 1: to get into, you know, some of what you've also
Speaker 1: found through your Future of Work report, and specifically about
Speaker 1: where workers are going, because we get the sense from
Speaker 1: the stats that we have access to publicly that folks
Speaker 1: are leaving New York, folks are leaving California, They're headed
Speaker 1: south or at least further into the country. Does your
Speaker 1: data Do your data back that up? Yeah? I think
Speaker 1: that the four biggest technology centers in the country are
Speaker 1: in California, New York, Washington, and mass Massachusetts. And what
Speaker 1: we're seeing is a every year migration from these four
Speaker 1: states to uh really all reasons of the country. But
Speaker 1: there are ten states in particular that people are moving
Speaker 1: out of those four states into and as a result
Speaker 1: of that, that talent um is creating new tech centers
Speaker 1: in places where you might not have expected them to emerge.
Speaker 1: And so what we're what we're really seeing is an
Speaker 1: emerging group of would be tech powerhouse states and they
Speaker 1: are set up to disproportionately be advantaged from the changing
Speaker 1: nature of work and in particular from the impact of AI.
Speaker 1: The states being right now it looks like Colorado, Utah, Virginia, Texas, Arizona, Florida,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, Nevada, Oregon, and Idaho of interesting because it's
Speaker 1: cheaper there to set up shop or what. Well, what
Speaker 1: we did a deep dive study into why those ten
Speaker 1: states are doing as well as they are, and really
Speaker 1: it's specific cities within those states that are the tip
Speaker 1: of the spear leading those states to prominence. And in
Speaker 1: almost all case as we saw the same pattern, which
Speaker 1: was the local government took measures to become more business
Speaker 1: friendly to draw businesses in. But that was only half
Speaker 1: the equation. The other thing they did is make a
Speaker 1: conscious effort to become family friendly, low cost living destinations.
Speaker 1: So they did things like revitalize their downtowns where they
Speaker 1: planted trees, put in bike lanes, buried the utilities. Um.
Speaker 1: They created a lot of affordable single family homes and
Speaker 1: or chief apartments. And then they also all happened to
Speaker 1: have good school districts. So you saw this perfect storm
Speaker 1: of business friendly environment plus family friendly environment. And by
Speaker 1: the way, a lot of these cities did this consciously.
Speaker 1: So it turns out this is a reality that you
Speaker 1: can create if you are a local government. UM. And
Speaker 1: it happens really fast. If you look at places like
Speaker 1: Portland's and Austen, their transformations happened in less than seven years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we hear, I mean we hear about it to
Speaker 1: the point where, you know, and Nashville obviously, uh had
Speaker 1: a terrible national or natural disaster happened this week with
Speaker 1: the tornadoes, But you know, you hear about Nashville and
Speaker 1: Austin specifically, you know, struggling to even keep up with
Speaker 1: with some of that growth. Do you guys get the
Speaker 1: sense that this is a sort of a secular thing
Speaker 1: or is it more cyclical and jobs ultimately will go back.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think especially of California, I know, and
Speaker 1: and in New York to to some extent, because these
Speaker 1: are long term, uh places. The guy in New York
Speaker 1: says rather defensively, Well, I mean, the four top states
Speaker 1: have six of the high tech ai juest currently, and
Speaker 1: the initial deployment of those technologies for consumer adoption are
Speaker 1: happening in those four states disproportionately as well. However, Uh,
Speaker 1: if you look at the rate at which tech centers
Speaker 1: are growing in the ten emerging states that I mentioned,
Speaker 1: it's two and a half times faster than what you're
Speaker 1: seeing in any of the four current pioneer states. It's
Speaker 1: a massive, massive influx of talent to those areas. And
Speaker 1: if you look at the nature of the applications that
Speaker 1: AI is being deployed for, it doesn't seem like it's
Speaker 1: going to be limited to the four big winners. It
Speaker 1: definitely seems like this is not just a moment in time,
Speaker 1: but this is a trend. I do wonder too, how
Speaker 1: much of you know, the migration from a state to
Speaker 1: another state in terms of tech centers and tech hubs.
Speaker 1: How much of is it? Is it because of big
Speaker 1: tech or is it just a lot of smaller players
Speaker 1: as well, Because I do wonder about and this plays
Speaker 1: into in the story the bigger, broader story big tech
Speaker 1: and they're growing influence on our world at large. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think big tech is really good at
Speaker 1: what they do, but innovation is the larger these companies become,
Speaker 1: the harder it is for them to do innovation, the
Speaker 1: more they go out and try to acquire innovations that
Speaker 1: have produced it internally. And then you look at and
Speaker 1: then you look at with some of these emerging technology,
Speaker 1: So like, let's take autonomous cars as an examp full um.
Speaker 1: Maybe not surprisingly, but Michigan turns out to be a
Speaker 1: hotbed of innovation around autentomous vehicles. Even have a whole
Speaker 1: city that has been built there just to drive autonomous
Speaker 1: vehicles around the whole fake city so that they can
Speaker 1: get reps and make sure that these cars are safe.
Speaker 1: And then you look at something like drones and drone
Speaker 1: tech can be built anywhere. So I think the the
Speaker 1: big tech disruptions that are imminent, and by imminent, I
Speaker 1: mean next five years or last, like, we can see
Speaker 1: it coming and it's going to radically alter the landscape
Speaker 1: of work. Um, those aren't currently based in the four
Speaker 1: big winners. They are spread across the country. All right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna leave it there, Thank you so much. Ian Siegel,
Speaker 1: co founder CEO of ZIP Recruiter, joining us on the
Speaker 1: phone from Santa Monica. Their recent report Future of Work.
Speaker 1: A lot of good stuff in there, and a lot
Speaker 1: of things to think about. Is we think about sort
Speaker 1: of where people are working, both in the short term
Speaker 1: owing to the coronavirus, but longer term, the geography, the
Speaker 1: sort of sociographics of the United States are changing. I
Speaker 1: do wonder too if companies realize, wow, I can do
Speaker 1: these jobs at home as easily, and that means I
Speaker 1: don't have overhead, I can have smaller facilities. I do
Speaker 1: wonder about the longer term impact.