Speaker 1: This is a Bloomberg Radio special. Generation Interrupted. I'm Lisa
Speaker 1: of brom Woods. Over the next hour, we look at
Speaker 1: the pandemics outsized impact on America's youngest workers, the people
Speaker 1: graduated free college into this pandemic. They're really getting hammered.
Speaker 1: We saw a decline of new jobs posted. The overall
Speaker 1: jobs rate it's been up about five for people between
Speaker 1: sixty and it's been up almost double that. Plus the
Speaker 1: pitfalls and setbacks tied to learning and starting a new
Speaker 1: job in a virtual world, entering the workforce, entering an organization,
Speaker 1: getting to know people, and doing that virtually. It creates
Speaker 1: challenges for younger people. It's the kids trying to struggle
Speaker 1: through zoom school. We're not paying enough attention to the
Speaker 1: harm that is happening among those kids, and also how
Speaker 1: young workers can respond and pivot to adapt to the
Speaker 1: pandemic technology. Those skills are very much in demand. Healthcare obviously,
Speaker 1: human services, financial services actors because they support the stay
Speaker 1: at home economy. From navigating the stay at home economy
Speaker 1: to overcoming setbacks from virtual learning and weathering a job
Speaker 1: market forever changed by the pandemic. It all lies ahead
Speaker 1: for a generation interrupted. The coronavirus pandemic and ensuing recession
Speaker 1: has had an outsized impact on Generation Z. Young people
Speaker 1: have had their education disrupted, their career plans upended, their
Speaker 1: financial prospects diminished. Any recession is going to hate young
Speaker 1: workers hard, but this one comes with unique challenges. Betsy
Speaker 1: Stephenson is former chief economist for the U S Department
Speaker 1: of Labor and current economics professor at the University of Michigan.
Speaker 1: Whenever we have a recession, the kids who are graduating
Speaker 1: from high school or college right around that time do
Speaker 1: face really significant labor market pains that can last a decade.
Speaker 1: Usually there's a traditional path for graduates fresh out of college,
Speaker 1: one that sets them on a path to the financial
Speaker 1: stability needed to start a family in the years that
Speaker 1: follow well, no demographic group has been untouched by this recession.
Speaker 1: The long term effects might be hitting college grads harder
Speaker 1: than most. The people graduating from college into this pandemic.
Speaker 1: They're really getting hammered, and that's because they would normally think,
Speaker 1: I just spent all this money on a college degree,
Speaker 1: and I should go into, you know, an entry level
Speaker 1: job that's gonna let me climb up the career ladder
Speaker 1: and I should be earning a pretty good wage by
Speaker 1: the time I'm thirty, and that's exactly the path that
Speaker 1: gets disrupted. You can see it in the types of
Speaker 1: jobs that are getting cut across the country, jobs the
Speaker 1: young workers either go to after graduation or rely on
Speaker 1: to help them pay for college. I spoke with Richmond
Speaker 1: Fed President Tom Barkin about the impact he's seeing in
Speaker 1: the labor market. This virus has gone directly at the
Speaker 1: personal contact jobs, their restaurants, their retailers, their amusement parks,
Speaker 1: and a jobs are disproportionately held by hourly people, by
Speaker 1: part time people, and importantly by young folks. Can you
Speaker 1: give us a sense of how bad the jobless rate
Speaker 1: has gotten among young folks? The overall jobless rate has
Speaker 1: been up about five For people between sixty and twenty four,
Speaker 1: it's been up almost double that. The long term fallout
Speaker 1: from that jobless rate can have massive implications for Generation Z.
Speaker 1: Research from the Richmond Fed bears it out, pointing to
Speaker 1: a long term impact for workers in their early twenties.
Speaker 1: Our research team says that most of life outcomes in
Speaker 1: terms of wealth, you know, the biggest driver is where
Speaker 1: you sit at age three, and so if we can't
Speaker 1: get folks into the workforce, into school, paying for school
Speaker 1: with their jobs in the workforce, by his tin, I
Speaker 1: think there's a real threat to what's going to happen
Speaker 1: at these folks throughout their career. When the pandemic hit,
Speaker 1: the US unemployment rate shot up more than ten percentage
Speaker 1: points In a single month, nearly fifteen percent of the
Speaker 1: workforce was unemployed. But when you break it down a
Speaker 1: workers age sixteen to nineteen, the jobless rate sword to
Speaker 1: more than thirty percent. For twenty to twenty four year olds,
Speaker 1: it hit twenty five percent. Those are both all time
Speaker 1: highs for those age groups, and at the same time,
Speaker 1: new job postings across the country virtually disappeared. Cheryl Brooks
Speaker 1: runs career in professional development at the University of Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: In the spring, we saw a decline of new jobs posted.
Speaker 1: About the biggest week was decrease, and that was the
Speaker 1: week of April. This spring, the labor force participation rate
Speaker 1: for people aged sixteen to twenty four dipped under fifty
Speaker 1: percent for the first time since the government started tracking
Speaker 1: the data eighty years ago. Jobs are disappearing that may
Speaker 1: never come back. Professor Stevenson says that's especially true of
Speaker 1: certain sectors. You know, leisure and hospitality employments down, so
Speaker 1: they're not entry level jobs for them right there. So
Speaker 1: trying to build that those skills and really coming into
Speaker 1: entry level, minimum wage leisure and hospitality jobs. Um, you
Speaker 1: know that it's been a blood bath and it probably
Speaker 1: will be for a while. For those who have been
Speaker 1: lucky enough to land jobs, they've had to lower expectations.
Speaker 1: That means lower pay and worse prospects for long term
Speaker 1: career growth. Even those who do have jobs are often
Speaker 1: having to take jobs that are lower in terms of
Speaker 1: their entry point than they would otherwise take. They're not
Speaker 1: getting the promotions that you usually get. And for young people,
Speaker 1: the way you climb up and build your career is
Speaker 1: you get a lot of movement in your twenties. You know,
Speaker 1: you change jobs, you get promotions, and that's also missing,
Speaker 1: and the data around that movement right now is very
Speaker 1: telling and discouraging. Tourist In Slock is one of Wall
Speaker 1: Street's best known strategists, leading the economics team at Deutsche
Speaker 1: Bank for more than a decade before becoming Chief Economist
Speaker 1: and Apollo Global Management. He sees some troubling trends developing. Normally,
Speaker 1: people who are switching jobs. You see that wage growth
Speaker 1: in the data from the FIT shows that wage growth
Speaker 1: normally goes up for people who are switching jobs. But
Speaker 1: this time around where you seeing wage growth go down,
Speaker 1: which probably is telling us that people are willing to
Speaker 1: take jobs at lower pay just to get into the
Speaker 1: labor market again. So that's also, from a very broad perspective,
Speaker 1: not helping new gradgrets. That's not helping people who just
Speaker 1: finish their education very broadly, because there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of competition from people who've been in the labor market
Speaker 1: for five, ten, twenty years who are not willing to
Speaker 1: take jobs at a lower paying What matters now is
Speaker 1: how long the effects will last and how does it
Speaker 1: threaten to leave permanent scars on this generation. I pose
Speaker 1: the question to Tom Barkin, President of the Federal Reserve
Speaker 1: Bank of Richmond. You know, folks that graduate college, for example,
Speaker 1: in a recession often started a different place than folks
Speaker 1: who graduate college in an upturn. That's just an obvious difference.
Speaker 1: Instead of the longer of the recession last I think
Speaker 1: the more risk we do have of this kind of
Speaker 1: scarring what's the difficulty in younger workers getting jobs at
Speaker 1: a time when you do see recovery in the economy,
Speaker 1: but you have an unemployment rate generally that's so high,
Speaker 1: So you have more experienced, older workers applying for the
Speaker 1: same entry level jobs perhaps that previously might have gotten
Speaker 1: taken up by younger workers. I think that is a risk,
Speaker 1: But I'd also say the risk is that, you know, normally,
Speaker 1: if you worked at a restaurant and your restaurant closed,
Speaker 1: you'd probably get a job at another restaurant, or maybe
Speaker 1: you go get a job at the gap. Today, you know,
Speaker 1: the retailers are closed, and the restaurants are closing, and
Speaker 1: a lot of other local small businesses are closing. So
Speaker 1: I just think the natural next jobs, you know, aren't
Speaker 1: as available as that would have otherwise been. And so
Speaker 1: I think that's a little bit more of the challenge,
Speaker 1: And that's why I'm focused on topics like how do
Speaker 1: we bridge this mismatch between the people who really do
Speaker 1: need employees and the employees who really need jobs. So far,
Speaker 1: that mismatch has yet to be bridged, and the addition
Speaker 1: of older, more qualified workers makes the situation more challenging
Speaker 1: for young job seekers. It also makes them prime candidates
Speaker 1: to be hit by layoffs. According to former Labor Department
Speaker 1: Chief economist Betsy Stevenson, I am quite worried about, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of that mid twenties person who's finally sort of
Speaker 1: made some progress. It's not that they're in an industry
Speaker 1: necessarily that got particularly hammered, but that they may be
Speaker 1: seen as one of the most expendable people on a
Speaker 1: team that needs to cut costs rapidly, and that it
Speaker 1: is going to hurt young people and it's gonna be
Speaker 1: that's exactly what takes them a long time to recover from. Well,
Speaker 1: when you talk about previous recessions and how the youngest
Speaker 1: cohort usually is the hardest hit, how long do they
Speaker 1: have until the scarring for their not being and not
Speaker 1: entering back into the workforce becomes more permanent or more pernicious.
Speaker 1: In other words, this idea that it sets back their wages,
Speaker 1: it sets back their household formation and then spending, and
Speaker 1: it trickles out to slower growth for a longer period
Speaker 1: of time. So what really matters is how long the
Speaker 1: recession last. Um, you know, as they said, the young
Speaker 1: people do tend there's a lot more churn among young
Speaker 1: people high unemployment rates, but then they get hired into jobs.
Speaker 1: But this it's the stagnation that they get even once
Speaker 1: they're employed, not getting raises, not getting promotions, not getting
Speaker 1: to climb the career ladder. And so if you have
Speaker 1: a long, prolonged recession with a long recovery, then it
Speaker 1: can take a very long time for them to get
Speaker 1: back to where they otherwise would have been. You know,
Speaker 1: you're sort of asking how long before we get permanent scarring? Look,
Speaker 1: I think there's already some damage to young people that's
Speaker 1: going to take them a decade to reverse. So I
Speaker 1: think of that already as some permanent scarring. You know,
Speaker 1: Can I get worse? Absolutely, And the longer it goes on,
Speaker 1: the worst it will get. For the youngest workers, having
Speaker 1: a college degree is proving to be little action from cutbacks.
Speaker 1: It's also offering no leg up in the search for
Speaker 1: a job. That's according to data from the online job
Speaker 1: site and recruitment company Indeed. Jed Colco is the firm's
Speaker 1: chief economist. The increase in unemployment um on young people
Speaker 1: has been almost as high for those with college degrees
Speaker 1: as those without. Now, for older workers. It's very different.
Speaker 1: For older workers, having a college degree has provided much
Speaker 1: more protection some immunity if you like UM. In this recession,
Speaker 1: UM not so for younger people or even the younger
Speaker 1: college grads of seeing UH being increased in their unemployment rates.
Speaker 1: And it's not just college grads, it's also students currently
Speaker 1: attending college. Jobs they once used to help pay their
Speaker 1: way through school are drawing up. Not only is that
Speaker 1: making it harder to pay tuition, it's depriving them of
Speaker 1: the opportunity to learn other skills. According to Tom Barkin,
Speaker 1: there are lots of opportunities for people to get into
Speaker 1: the workforce to learn this off skills about how to
Speaker 1: show up, how to work with a group of people,
Speaker 1: how to have a boss, how to deliver day to day.
Speaker 1: These are starting places for people in our economy. In addition,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who are in school
Speaker 1: who use these jobs to help pay for school. And
Speaker 1: so whether it's you're getting started or you're just trying
Speaker 1: to fund your future, these first jobs really do matter.
Speaker 1: Do you see a destruction of them or a transformation
Speaker 1: of them right now away from service sectors into a
Speaker 1: different kind of job that fits more with the cyber
Speaker 1: world that we're apparently living in. I still have hopes
Speaker 1: that we're going to be beyond this virus eventually, whether
Speaker 1: it be a treatment for a vaccine, But it's not
Speaker 1: hard to imagine a scenario where a lot of these
Speaker 1: jobs do go away, where people decide to automate personal contact,
Speaker 1: or many of the small businesses and restaurants that have
Speaker 1: been threatened or closed. And in that case, we've got
Speaker 1: a whole population that's going to need a new set
Speaker 1: of entry level jobs. And I don't think this is
Speaker 1: as easy as putting everyone into technology or putting everyone
Speaker 1: into construction. I think there's been some self selection of
Speaker 1: the people in these jobs, and so we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to be thinking about what are the careers that are
Speaker 1: going to be the substitutes for the entry level retail
Speaker 1: job or travel job, hospitality job. As entry level positions
Speaker 1: become scarce, more students are staying in school looking to
Speaker 1: get their m b A. Or j D. Graduate school
Speaker 1: applications are surging as students put off entering the workforce.
Speaker 1: Stanford's Graduate School of Business just had the largest incoming
Speaker 1: class in its history. At the same time, though, entrepreneurship
Speaker 1: from the school's graduates is taking a hit. I spoke
Speaker 1: with Stanford business tean Jonathan Levin. We normally have about
Speaker 1: of our class that launches new ventures. We had some
Speaker 1: had some amazing companies come out of the Stanford Business School,
Speaker 1: including in recent years, and including with just this last class.
Speaker 1: Think maybe a little more anxiety about starting off on
Speaker 1: your own at a time when there's so much uncertainty
Speaker 1: in the world, And that's something again we'll know we'll
Speaker 1: be looking at very closely this year. We do everything
Speaker 1: we can to support students who who both want to
Speaker 1: go into existing organizations but also want to start something
Speaker 1: and and take a little of a risk as they
Speaker 1: as they leave business school and well, business school applications surge,
Speaker 1: it's a different story for undergraduates. They're staying home. Enrollment
Speaker 1: at Harvard University is down nearly twenty from a year ago.
Speaker 1: There are also other disruptions that are harder to quantify
Speaker 1: twenty or thirty years from now. What's the one factor
Speaker 1: we should have paid more attention to at this very moment.
Speaker 1: I posed that question to former Labor Department Chief economist
Speaker 1: Betsy Stevenson. So for me, that's not the kids trying
Speaker 1: to enter the labor market right now. It's the kids
Speaker 1: trying to struggle through zoom school. You know, I think
Speaker 1: that we're not paying enough attention to the harm that
Speaker 1: is happening among those kids. It's not just their education
Speaker 1: that's being disrupted. Their hard skills. Are they going to
Speaker 1: be able to do as much math? Are they gonna
Speaker 1: be able to read as well? Are they gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: have the science knowledge and the technology knowledge to thrive
Speaker 1: in the workplace. They also need the sort of social
Speaker 1: emotional skills that get developed in you know, your standard
Speaker 1: K through twelve classroom, but even your college classroom. A
Speaker 1: lot of growing up in college is about those connections
Speaker 1: you make with your classmates late at night, debating issues,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how you're gonna see the world.
Speaker 1: All these things are interrupted for young people, and I
Speaker 1: don't think that we're paying enough attention to what it's
Speaker 1: gonna take to make it up to those young people
Speaker 1: so that when they hit their twenties in their thirties,
Speaker 1: they're as good to go as previous generations were at
Speaker 1: maximizing their potential. The economic fallout from the pandemic is
Speaker 1: already hitting low income family's hardest, and now the shift
Speaker 1: of virtual learning is doing the same, with high speed internet,
Speaker 1: laptops and other technology out of reach for the less fortunate.
Speaker 1: Cell Con is founder of the free online education platform
Speaker 1: con Academy. Of the population that really doesn't have sufficient
Speaker 1: internet access, school districts have been doing a heroic job
Speaker 1: getting laptops out, The local telecom carriers have been doing
Speaker 1: a great job getting them that Internet access. But even then,
Speaker 1: we're seeing five ten percent of the population isn't engaged
Speaker 1: for whatever reason. They might be young kids, maybe their
Speaker 1: parents are essential workers. They don't have enough devices at home,
Speaker 1: not sufficient bandwidth, we don't know. And so that five
Speaker 1: or ten percent, you can imagine they were always the kids.
Speaker 1: They are already the kids who are probably just proportionately
Speaker 1: not engaging in school. And now if they're not even
Speaker 1: being reached for six months one year, not only will
Speaker 1: they not learn over that time period, they're going to
Speaker 1: atrophy and they might just lose the structures of school,
Speaker 1: and the worst thing is it's going to be really
Speaker 1: bad for their mental health. Distance learning right now, ironically,
Speaker 1: is most kids lifeline to community and socialization and friendships.
Speaker 1: The prospect of virtual college has many students to laying education,
Speaker 1: but that hasn't been the case at Howard University. Admissions
Speaker 1: at the historically black university are up despite the drawbacks
Speaker 1: of virtual learning. Howard President Dr. Wayne AI. Frederick says
Speaker 1: the college is doing its best to adapt, but concedes
Speaker 1: there's no substitute for in person learning. We have a
Speaker 1: significant number of low income students, and the primary thing
Speaker 1: they get from coming here is the installing of confidence,
Speaker 1: and that happens from their interaction with one another, from
Speaker 1: the interaction with their faculty members, from the socialization that
Speaker 1: takes space outside of the classroom. Eighty percent of what
Speaker 1: they learn, in my opinion, takes space outside of the classroom,
Speaker 1: and so that has been compromised, there's no doubt about that.
Speaker 1: And we've been trying to fill that space with virtual
Speaker 1: connections around that, so not just didactic instruction, but programming
Speaker 1: that would still give them that opportunity to express themselves
Speaker 1: and to grow and to learn, uh, you know, how
Speaker 1: to interact with one another. A number of students have
Speaker 1: just decided to delay their start of college instead of
Speaker 1: doing it all online. Do you think that that's the
Speaker 1: right tack to take. You know, that's interesting because he
Speaker 1: had Howard, we actually had plans of being in a
Speaker 1: class of about two thousand students. We ended up with
Speaker 1: an incoming class off so what we saw was very different.
Speaker 1: Our enrollment is of UH sixtent, primarily because our retention.
Speaker 1: It also went up as well. So what we've seen
Speaker 1: is Howard students at least have made a decision that
Speaker 1: they want to pursue higher education in this downtime, um,
Speaker 1: even if it's in this environment, so that they keep
Speaker 1: moving along and they don't you know, kind of drop
Speaker 1: out for a year and have to catch back up.
Speaker 1: Until it's been very different, and I think some of
Speaker 1: it again may have to do with having so many
Speaker 1: students coming from circumstances where they don't necessarily have their
Speaker 1: finances and also probably looking at what else am I
Speaker 1: going to do in the pandemic. It's not like if
Speaker 1: you take a year, oh if you can go, you know,
Speaker 1: travel to you up or do something else like that
Speaker 1: right now, and I think so quite a few of
Speaker 1: us and has decided to stay with us. The virtual
Speaker 1: environment isn't just impacting the college experience. It's also a
Speaker 1: challenge for new employees. A virtual workplace offers none of
Speaker 1: the networking opportunities or water cooler talk that new workers
Speaker 1: used to form relationships with fellow employees or to get
Speaker 1: face time with their bosses. Stanford Business Dean Jonathan Levin
Speaker 1: is seeing this challenge show up with a lot of
Speaker 1: graduates because we've shifted to online work. Keeping things going
Speaker 1: is easier than starting new things and onboarding people, bringing
Speaker 1: them into an organization, getting them up to speed, and
Speaker 1: so I think that's that's something that all organizations are
Speaker 1: working on. And any student who's now entering jobs has
Speaker 1: to go through the process of entering the workforce, entering organization,
Speaker 1: getting to know people, and doing that that virtually and
Speaker 1: you know, all in a relatively short amount of time.
Speaker 1: Studies show generations that come of age during a downturn
Speaker 1: have lower long term earnings power. It has the potential
Speaker 1: to impact them and the economy for decades, and the
Speaker 1: courage shift to a stay at home economy is complicating
Speaker 1: the matter. There are some sectors hiring right now, but
Speaker 1: not the ones young workers traditionally pursue. Jet Colco is
Speaker 1: chief economist for Indeed, the sectors where hiring has been
Speaker 1: very strong are goods related sectors, construction, driving, retail, warehouse jobs.
Speaker 1: And these are sectors that are doing well because they
Speaker 1: support the stay at home economy, um, But they tend
Speaker 1: to hire fewer college grads, and they don't tend to
Speaker 1: be the sectors that young college grads look at first,
Speaker 1: and the sectors that are hiring right now for the
Speaker 1: most part, our jobs that pay less. We've seen much
Speaker 1: slower recovery in job postings in higher wage sectors, partly
Speaker 1: because those higher wage sectors are on the one hand,
Speaker 1: slower to laid people off, um, but also in terms
Speaker 1: of uncertainty, UM, they're slower to hire. There's also concern
Speaker 1: that some traditional jobs, the ones hit hardest by the pandemic,
Speaker 1: could go away for good. Richmond FED President Tom Barkin
Speaker 1: has been looking at the prospect of some positions disappearing entirely.
Speaker 1: So I think a lot of these jobs that have
Speaker 1: been threatened, I think actually there's a way to reimagine
Speaker 1: them that won't keep every one of the job, but
Speaker 1: actually may retain more than we've got right now. I
Speaker 1: know that you have kids who fit within this cohort.
Speaker 1: What would your recommendation be to someone of in this
Speaker 1: age group who is looking to retrain themselves some capacity.
Speaker 1: What skills are most in demand right now that could
Speaker 1: give them the best chance to say, you have an
Speaker 1: interest in affinity for technology, those skills are very much
Speaker 1: in demand, and certainly everything looks like that will continue
Speaker 1: to be in demand. I'd also say skilled trades, working
Speaker 1: around the house, fixing cars, any of those, if you
Speaker 1: have that kind of affinity, that's another place that for
Speaker 1: sure we have needs now and I think we will
Speaker 1: in the future. And then the third place I point
Speaker 1: to his healthcare. Certainly this pandemic has pointed that out
Speaker 1: home health is a great example of a place that's
Speaker 1: likely to grow as nursing homes have challenged, so getting
Speaker 1: into those fields. They're seeing similar trends at the University
Speaker 1: of Massachusetts, along with a pickup and recruitment for internships.
Speaker 1: Cheryl Brooks runs career in professional development at the school.
Speaker 1: We're seeing a big boost that in just the last
Speaker 1: couple of weeks in internships and co ops what we
Speaker 1: call field experience, which makes sense for when these positions
Speaker 1: they're looking at um for the spring actually spring co
Speaker 1: op positions or summer. Uh so you know employers do
Speaker 1: realize that they need to continue to look at future
Speaker 1: hiring and to keep creating that pool of invidence for
Speaker 1: the pipeline for the future. But even so, some parts
Speaker 1: of the workforce may need to retrain in an effort
Speaker 1: to move across industries, and that's where the government could
Speaker 1: play a bigger role. According to former Labor Department Chief
Speaker 1: economist Betsy Stevenson, we will have sexual real realignments. We
Speaker 1: will have some industries that don't come back, and we'll
Speaker 1: have other industries that grow. And you can't think, well,
Speaker 1: the companies that, you know, companies are going to provide
Speaker 1: this training. I think this is really about getting people
Speaker 1: to move across industries. And when we're trying to get
Speaker 1: people to switch their skills from one industry to another,
Speaker 1: that's when we need government training. That's not about you know,
Speaker 1: individual company offering some training. That's really about governments offering
Speaker 1: training programs that help people align the skills that they
Speaker 1: have with the skills that employers are currently seeking in
Speaker 1: the labor market. And on that front, younger workers may
Speaker 1: have a leg up. The prospect of retraining is much
Speaker 1: more palpable to someone in their early twenties than it
Speaker 1: is to those who have built up a decade or
Speaker 1: two of experience. Stevenson says that Generation Z may also
Speaker 1: have another advantage. They are the least likely not immune,
Speaker 1: but the least likely to develop the worst parts of
Speaker 1: COVID or to develop a very severe case. And I
Speaker 1: am seeing some young people actually being able to step
Speaker 1: into opportunities that are being needed by older people stepping
Speaker 1: out of the labor force. So if you want to
Speaker 1: find the one tiny silver lining, it's that, But I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say that's a pretty small silver lining. Some also
Speaker 1: point to remote and virtual work as a possible advantage
Speaker 1: for young workers, since they're likely more tech savvy than
Speaker 1: their older counterparts, but according to Jed coleco Had, indeed
Speaker 1: the drawbacks for college grads far outweigh the benefits. Remote
Speaker 1: work can often be very productive for people who already
Speaker 1: have relationships too, already UM, know how their organizations work, UM,
Speaker 1: and who already have strong professional networks. I think WOTE
Speaker 1: work is much harder for younger people who may be
Speaker 1: newly hired or don't have the same professional networks as
Speaker 1: people who are later in their career, so I think
Speaker 1: they shift to remote work UM. While it has lots
Speaker 1: of advantages opening up opportunities for people who might not
Speaker 1: live where certain kinds of jobs are UM, it can
Speaker 1: offer flexibility for people who have lots of responsibilities outside
Speaker 1: of work, but I do think it creates challenges UM
Speaker 1: for younger people who might not know their organizational culture
Speaker 1: or have the same kinds of networks as older workers have.
Speaker 1: Hasn't just been the year of the pandemic. It's also
Speaker 1: been a year of intense social activism and racial unrest,
Speaker 1: and for some that's changing career decisions. Earlier, we told
Speaker 1: you how undergraduate enrollment was falling at most colleges, but
Speaker 1: it's gaining at Howard University, the historically black university benefits
Speaker 1: from a unique profile in a year that's notable for
Speaker 1: social activism, and President Wayne AI Frederick is seeing that
Speaker 1: show up in enrollment data. Political science has risen to
Speaker 1: the top of the heap. Is one of the most
Speaker 1: sought after majors out our university, and and that is
Speaker 1: very telling. Biology was always was always one of our
Speaker 1: top major in terms of enrolment and premed interest. UM
Speaker 1: is also beginning to peak as we have seen the
Speaker 1: impact of the pandemic, and we talked so often about
Speaker 1: frontline workers. So all of that is definitely causing a
Speaker 1: shift in what young people want to do. Etside of
Speaker 1: we just launched a b j D program UH this
Speaker 1: this fall UH will that will allow students to take
Speaker 1: a year less to get their B and to go
Speaker 1: on and enroll directly into a g D program. And
Speaker 1: that's going to be well over subscribe because of the
Speaker 1: interests of people wanting to become lawmakers and is as
Speaker 1: quickly as possible. Well, students at Howard are pushing ahead.
Speaker 1: Others are pushing pause the resetting timelines and education, their
Speaker 1: careers and even adulthood. A few research survey finds a
Speaker 1: majority of eighteen to twenty nine year olds and how
Speaker 1: living with their parents. That's the highest level since the
Speaker 1: Great Depression. Betsy Stevenson says the pandemic didn't cause this trend,
Speaker 1: but it's sped up the process that was already in motion.
Speaker 1: We're definitely seeing people, you know, postponing having kids, they're
Speaker 1: postponing getting married, and we saw in the two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight recession, you know, lots of kids moving in
Speaker 1: with their parents. I think there's a lot of debate
Speaker 1: about is that Is that a terrible thing? I think
Speaker 1: one of the things we're seeing as parents, the size
Speaker 1: of the American home has increased, so there's more space
Speaker 1: to bring your adult kids back, and kids have better
Speaker 1: relationships with adult kids have better relationships with their parents today. Um,
Speaker 1: those are all good things. The bad thing is that
Speaker 1: it's a expensive for them out there and so they
Speaker 1: come home. Is this just the pandemic, No, it's absolutely not.
Speaker 1: This is like a trend we've been seeing as kids
Speaker 1: spend more time at home. They stay on their parents
Speaker 1: health insurance because they're not getting health insurance in their jobs,
Speaker 1: and when they're young, they stay in their parents house
Speaker 1: so that they can save up because housing is expensive,
Speaker 1: and they wait until they're in their late twenties or thirties,
Speaker 1: you know, to have a child. So that delay is
Speaker 1: definitely a longer run pattern. The pandemic is exacerbating it
Speaker 1: because we know are interacting with people who are in
Speaker 1: our own little bubble, and so a lot of people
Speaker 1: are choosing to move back in with their parents and
Speaker 1: be in that bubble and have their parents, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of help them out. It's also the case that
Speaker 1: you know they've lost their job, um or you know,
Speaker 1: they can't afford housing. So there, there's certainly, there's certainly
Speaker 1: problems there, and you are right to say that this
Speaker 1: is part of a younger run trend about people not
Speaker 1: quite growing up as fast. I don't know to the
Speaker 1: extent to which the pandemic will have sort of permanently
Speaker 1: switched those patterns. Other patterns will likely emerge from this
Speaker 1: pandemic to we could see books and papers written decades
Speaker 1: from now detailing broad shifts in the global economy and
Speaker 1: long term changes in consumer habits. Crisis creates opportunity. Take
Speaker 1: it from Mark Cuban before you own the Dallas Mavericks.
Speaker 1: The tech entrepreneur turned a fresh idea into a billion
Speaker 1: dollar fortune. Now he's betting the others will do the same.
Speaker 1: So many small businesses are closing, so many, you know,
Speaker 1: retail stores are closing, malls are going bankrupt. Companies that
Speaker 1: are unable to transition to selling digitally or really taking
Speaker 1: a full advantage of e commerce are struggling. That type
Speaker 1: of uncertainty creates a lot of opportunity, and combine that
Speaker 1: with people becoming far more comfortable with purchasing on line
Speaker 1: and living a digital lifestyle. I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of unique opportunities that are available to people who who
Speaker 1: are creative, who have a vision for the future. You know,
Speaker 1: ten years will look back and they'll be ten world
Speaker 1: class companies that were created by people who we probably
Speaker 1: think are thinking are crazy right about now. Only time
Speaker 1: will tell what fresh ideas will emerge from this pandemic.
Speaker 1: Every generation has its challenges, but the road ahead for
Speaker 1: this one looks especially difficult. How it rises to the
Speaker 1: occasion will define its legacy and its impact on the
Speaker 1: global economy for years to come. Thanks for joining me
Speaker 1: on this Bloomberg Radio special, Generation Interrupted. If you joined
Speaker 1: us late, catch the full show on our Bloomberg Surveillance
Speaker 1: podcast feed, available on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, and anywhere else
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. This program was produced by Seth
Speaker 1: magdalen Er and Colin Tipton. I'm Lisa Abramo. It's and
Speaker 1: this is bloombergh m HM