Disrupting Unemployment — the Innovation for Jobs Summit at Google

With Vint Cerf and Astro Teller of Google.

Background: “How can innovation disrupt unemployment and create meaningful work for everyone? How can we create a strong middle class innovation economy? Consider this opportunity: Less than half of all people in the OECD countries are in the workforce. Only a third of them are engaged in their work. Less than a quarter of the US human capacity is creating value in the economy.
Imagine if innovative entrepreneurs could use technology to create jobs tailored to fit every person in the same way products and services can be tailored to match consumer tastes? What if this technology could match the innate abilities and passions of every individual with the most valuable opportunities in a long-tail economy?” — from the slow-loading i4j site.

Is this Socialism 2.0 or, alternatively, an employment marketplace?

It’s a bit of a conundrum for “jobs” per se, whereas finding symbolic immortality in “meaningful work” seems like an easier challenge if one just ignores the liklihood of extreme power laws in income distribution.

Information asymmetries and inefficiencies define labor markets today. This leads to “costly signals of quality” — like four-year college degrees and trusted brands being overvalued. “There has been a 25% drop in job mobility in the U.S. since 2000, and half of wage increases come from job mobility. The barriers keep growing. Over 50% of EA job listings require a 4-year college degree.” — U.S. National Economic Council

This got me thinking about how to address those costly signals of quality: 1) lifelong credentialing expanding from online education to freelancing to careers 2) internships as a trial for “experience goods” as people tend to be 3) training contracts that avoid the legal barriers for indentured servitude, etc.

I hope to be able to share video from the event. Meanwhile, here is a short video that covers some of my precursor thoughts on a tech-accelerated rich-poor gap: and prior flickr posts.