MI Future of Work Report - FINAL

FUTURE OF WORK
Insights for 2021 and Beyond

KEVIN KLOWDEN AND QUINTUS LIM
ABOUT THE MILKEN INSTITUTE
The Milken Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank. We catalyze practical,

scalable solutions to global challenges by connecting human, financial, and
educational resources to those who need them.
We leverage the expertise and insight gained through research and the convening
of top experts, innovators, and influencers from different backgrounds and
competing viewpoints to construct programs and policy initiatives. Our goal is
to help people build meaningful lives in which they can experience health and
well-being, pursue effective education and gainful employment, and access the
resources required to create ever-expanding opportunities for themselves and their
broader communities.
ABOUT THE CENTER FOR REGIONAL ECONOMICS
The Milken Institute Center for Regional Economics produces research, programs,
and events designed to inform and activate innovative economic and policy solutions
to drive job creation and industry expansion.
ABOUT THE ASIA CENTER
The Milken Institute Asia Center extends the reach and impact of Milken Institute
programs, events, and research to the Asia-Pacific region. We identify opportunities
to leverage the Institute’s global network to tackle regional challenges, as well as to
integrate the region’s perspectives into the development of solutions to persistent
global challenges.
In partnership with Infosys
©2021 Milken Institute
This work is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License, available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.
CONTENTS
1 Key Takeaways
2 Introduction
5 Remote Work
5 Remote Hiring and Job Opportunities
8 Productivity and Surveillance
10 Preferences
12 Skills and Training
13 The Race between Education and Technology
16 Future Occupations and Industries
16 Course Corrections in Digitalization
16 The Productivity Paradox
17 Pandemic Resilience versus Future Resilience
18 Tasks, Jobs, and Companies
20 Preparing for the Future of Work
20 Strengthening Business-Education Partnerships
22 Financing Access to Opportunities
23 Creating Sustainable, Broad-Based Growth
25 Evaluating and Iterating
27 Conclusion
28 Endnotes
33 About the Authors

KEY TAKEAWAYS
• The COVID-19 pandemic is a double-whammy for inequality: The worst-off are

hit harder while accelerating economy-wide digitalization further widens the
skills gap.
• This report highlights technology’s increasing impact on the workplace,

providing valuable information for policymakers, business leaders, and
educational institutions so they can make better decisions about how to
prepare workers for the future.
• First, the report describes attitudes and perspectives toward remote work
and skills training, using a “Future of Work” survey of 1,000 managers and
employees by technology consulting firm Infosys. Key findings include:
» broad shift toward remote working and hiring, with a greater focus on
a
inclusion and diversity (however, lower-wage respondents saw fewer
opportunities);
» net satisfaction with remote work and productivity, notwithstanding higher
workloads and the loss of social interactions with colleagues;
» high trust in employees during remote work, though with increased
surveillance; and
» a rise in employee skills training focused on working remotely, which
most employees found useful (however, lower-wage employees felt more
responsible for training themselves).
• Building on these findings, this report makes several recommendations to

address rising inequality and disruption, supplemented with insights generated
from numerous public events the Milken Institute has convened. These
recommendations include:
» ccelerating regional growth through public investments that broaden

a
access to local sectors with high potential;
» financing access to education and skills training, including for

underprivileged populations;
» strengthening business-education partnerships, including just-in-time

learning, agile curricula, and flexible time commitment; and
» regular and outcomes-based evaluation of initiatives, to continually identify

areas for improvement.
MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF WORK 1

INTRODUCTION
The aftermath of the 2008-09 financial crisis spotlighted unequal access to jobs
and opportunities in the US. After the Occupy Wall Street protests, many industries
and agencies re-examined policy areas for their impacts on inequality (including
even the Federal Reserve1). Many policies today, including universal basic income,2
free education and health care, reduced labor inflows, and controlled trade
and investments, are partly in response to unequal access to opportunities and
uncertainties about the future of work.
Meanwhile, artificial intelligence (AI) has exceeded human capability3 in such areas
as image classification, language translation, and speech recognition. For example,
DeepMind’s AlphaFold has generated breakthrough solutions in protein folding (a
50-year-old problem),4 while OpenAI’s GPT-3 can write HTML code to generate
websites based only on human descriptions of what the site would look like.5 AI
enables autonomous vehicles and navigational systems that allow ships to cross
the Atlantic and planes to land without radio signals. Entire factories and ports
are already fully automated, as are an increasing suite of services. The benefits for
industries are deep and far-reaching.
However, with automation comes displacement. By 2030 in the US:
• McKinsey estimates that 16 million to 54 million workers6 may need to switch

occupations.
• Oxford Economics forecasts some 2 million job losses7 in manufacturing due to

robotics automation.
• A Brookings Institution analysis predicts that six in 10 jobs8 will face medium to
high exposure to automation.
• PwC gauges that over a quarter9 of jobs could be automated.
Worse, research and industry diffusion of technologies are accelerating, and many
believe that speed determines the winner in the world of AI. This leaves workers
less time to adjust and reskill. Moreover, general-purpose technologies, such as
AI, blockchain, cloud computing, and 5G, will leave broad swathes of industries
vulnerable to disruption.uru Gowrappan, CEO, Verizon Media (2020 Global
Conference)

INSIGHTS FROM MILKEN INSTITUTE EVENTS
“It’s even faster than I thought, the speed … from [AI] research to product.”
Lee Kai-Fu, Chairman and CEO, Sinovation Ventures
(2020 Global Conference)
“You have to worry about concentration [plus] new companies nipping at your
heels with very flexible easy entry … So it is actually a hard time to go slow as a
major company.”
Susan Athey, The Economics of Technology Professor,
Stanford University (2020 Global Conference)
“Every industry here is going to get disrupted for the next three to five years,
and these are all changes that will last for decades.”
Guru Gowrappan, CEO, Verizon Media
Positively, the same studies often expect technology to produce net gains in jobs,
as seen in the past. Indeed, the US experienced an unusually protracted rise in
employment from 2010-19 (see Figure 1) even amid the ongoing AI revolution.
This speaks in part to successful efforts by key stakeholders to address the shifts in
skills demanded and the crucial role various organizations play in preparing their
communities for the future.

Figure 1: US Unemployment Rate, 2000–2020
Note: Shaded columns denote recession periods.

Source: US Department of Labor (2021)
Unfortunately, COVID-19 has worsened matters for now, and World Economic
Forum research believes that while there will still be a net gain in jobs, the
magnitude of this gain is shrinking.10 The ongoing pandemic is a double-whammy
for inequality: The worst-off are hit harder while accelerating economy-wide
digitalization further widens the skills gap.
Civilian unemployment spiked by over 17 million in just two months. Small

businesses11 and the less well off12 have been hit particularly hard. Meanwhile,
those who kept their jobs had to reimagine their business lines, adopt unfamiliar
technologies, and revisit all assumptions about the nature of work itself. With the
future of work looming nearer than ever, how prepared are we to face it?

REMOTE WORK
The Milken Institute partnered with technology consulting firm Infosys to conduct a
survey on attitudes and preparedness towards the future of work. Infosys surveyed
608 managers and 401 employees—all US-based—from companies with at least $1
billion in revenue from October to November 2020.
REMOTE HIRING AND JOB OPPORTUNITIES
Companies’ responses to COVID-19 are varied and evenly distributed (see Figure
2). Unsurprisingly, many switched to remote work and adopted the technologies
to do so, with computer programmers leading this trend. Larger companies, as well
as the entertainment and education industries, turned more toward wage cuts
and layoffs, while arts and design saw a larger share of respondents closing offices.
Meanwhile, the health-care industry responded to COVID-19 by increasing efforts
toward diversity.
Figure 2: Firms' Responses to COVID-19
Source: Infosys (2020)

“[Remote work] throws up the question: Do we need all this real estate, all these
offices, and can more be actually done from home?”
Thomas Gottstein, CEO, Credit Suisse (Conversations with Mike Milken Podcast
Series)
“We’ve invested a lot over the last 10 years actually on making sure that we had
the right technology to work from home.”
Carmine Di Sibio, Global Chairman and CEO, EY (Conversations with Mike Milken
Podcast Series)
Most employees saw increased job opportunities from other geographies, and
employers were more willing to hire workers from elsewhere, especially smaller
firms (see Figure 3). Relatedly, 13 percent of respondents reported a greater
emphasis on diversity at their workplace. This could bode well for workers with
different backgrounds who are traditionally constrained by geography. However,
lower-income employees saw fewer remote job opportunities. It remains to be seen
what the net impact of remote hiring will be on workplace inclusivity.
Figure 3: More Remote Hiring and Working during Covid-19

“Diversity and inclusion is potentially enhanced by … remote work, the ability

to access new pools of talent, [and] the capacity to try to think about how to
create an inclusive community.”
David McCormick, CEO, Bridgewater Associates (2020 Global Conference)
“We set some goals around diversity [to which] we’re now linking executive
compensation.”
Kevin Johnson, President and CEO, Starbucks (2020 Global Conference)
“Start looking for opportunities of people from communities selling into those
communities … because those aren’t high-cost opportunities at all.”
Mark Cuban, Owner, Dallas Mavericks (2020 Summer Series)
“[Startups] no longer have to be in Zone A hiring cities … They’re able to go and

get some of the best talent and compete on an apples-to-apples basis with these
larger companies.”
Irina Novoselsky, CEO, CareerBuilder (2020 Global Conference)
“The flexibility that work from home and a hybrid model offers, I think, is going
to actually be a big boon for women.”
Greg Maffei, President and CEO, Liberty Media Corporation (2020 Global
Conference)
How many have capitalized on these remote opportunities? A third of respondents

relocated since the onset of COVID-19, and nearly half of respondents now
primarily work from home. Interestingly, the desire to move to areas with lower
COVID-19 infection rates did not significantly influence respondents’ desire to
relocate (see Figure 4). Over a third wanted to live with family, while nearly a fifth
sought to defray costs of living. Of those who moved, eight in nine were satisfied
with their new location, with managers reporting higher satisfaction than non-
managers.

Figure 4: Relocation and the Ideal Workplace
The majority chose home as their ideal workplace, while a quarter picked the office.
A few chose nature (park, beach, island, etc.), cafés, or quiet places. Again, almost
no one picked their ideal workplace based on avoiding COVID-19. Interestingly,
similar proportions of managers and non-managers wanted to work from the office.
Respondents without children and female respondents wanted to work from home
more than their counterparts.
PRODUCTIVITY AND SURVEILLANCE
Respondents thought they were more productive while working remotely, even
as their workloads also increased (see Figure 5). Most lower-income respondents
and workers in smaller companies felt more productive in the office, while higher-
income respondents and childless respondents felt more productive at home.
Managers reported high confidence in employees’ productivity amid remote
work. Just under one in eight respondents think work hours will decrease with
technological advancement.
Remote work has eroded the boundaries between home and office, increasing
working hours. It is also possible that people are working harder to keep their
jobs secure amid the economic downturn. Increased remote working may further
lengthen workers’ hours because of greater competition arising from remote hiring,
the need to accommodate colleagues in other time zones, and an awareness that
companies are scrutinizing their employees’ time more closely.

Figure 5: Higher Productivity but Greater Workload
Most employers expressed concern about collaboration, effectiveness, and morale

and admitted to keeping closer tabs on employees (see Figure 6). Similarly, most
employees reported more meetings and greater pressure to demonstrate their
commitment, including being first to meetings, keeping videos on, and emailing
beyond working hours. Female respondents were slightly likelier to work longer
hours and assume new projects. Male respondents were slightly likelier to take
additional classes and much likelier to say that their workloads are higher.
Figure 6: Trust upon Scrutiny

PREFERENCES
There is a net preference for remote work and a net increase in work-life flexibility
(see Figure 7), which is congruent with earlier findings about higher satisfaction.
Nonetheless, respondents also miss the social aspects of working in the office,
such as ad hoc conversations and in-person collaboration. Aligning with earlier
responses that they are more productive when working remotely, few respondents
indicated that they missed the focus they had at work or the helpful hints they
would receive from co-workers.
Figure 7: Preferences Regarding Remote Work
Relatedly, research has found that while increased work-life flexibility has allowed
people more time to spend on unpaid domestic work, women in the US still average
five more hours13 per week on domestic work than men do. Coupled with fewer
social interactions and increased surveillance, remote work has not been a panacea
for work-life balance. A positive development is that many C-suite executives are
contemplating how to address its downsides.
“Our biggest challenge is frankly how do you still maintain a vibrant culture,
how do you still maintain that camaraderie, get to see your friends at work, all
those sorts of intangible things.”
Jason Maynard, Senior Vice President of Global Field Operations, Oracle
NetSuite Global Business Unit (2020 Global Conference)

“Learning how to work remotely, to be present when you can’t be present, is
an incredibly challenging skill … There is a generation coming … that has had a
masterclass in leadership in eight months that took me 25 years to learn.”
Judith McKenna, President and CEO, Walmart International (2020 Global
Conference)
“I’m very concerned about the time decay that inevitably is going to come from
[remote work] ... Our success is going to be contingent on having an engaged
employee base that really wants to perform, and part of that engagement is a
sense of inclusion.”
Todd Gibbons, CEO, BNY Mellon (2020 Global Conference)
“Better work gets done when people can run into each other in hallways,
see each other at lunchtime, and ideas can be communicated. What I find
fascinating is how many people have said that they thought working at home
would be fun, and they can’t stand it.”
Judy Faulkner, Founder and CEO, Epic (Conversations with Mike Milken Podcast
Series)
It is possible that worries about insufficient interaction drive managers to hold

more meetings, which are then misinterpreted by employees as heightened
surveillance. It is specifically the casual, directionless conversations that employees
enjoy (see Figure 7), rather than all forms of communication.14 Indicatively, “Zoom
fatigue”15 has become so prevalent that companies like Google have implemented
“no meetings weeks.”16
It is also worrying that 97 percent of respondents believed their company would

prioritize business continuity over employees’ safety when thinking about returning
to the office. While the pandemic situation remains in flux and makes decision
making difficult, this nonetheless indicates that increasing meetings may not have
addressed employees’ main concerns.

SKILLS AND
TRAINING
Amid the short-term trend towards remote work, jobs themselves will change,
requiring new skills and methods of attaining them. When thinking about growth
prospects, a third of CEOs are extremely concerned about the availability of key
skills.17 It is hence important to dissect respondents’ attitudes towards skills
training for the future.
“The biggest collateral damage [of Covid-19] would be if we sleep through

a huge opportunity to shift gear in our economies and our societies for the
better… Is [the digital economy] going to be a winner for few but not for
everybody?”
Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund (2020
Summer Series)
Future skills normally fall into two main categories: STEM on one side and
creativity and empathy on the other. Bill Gates has extolled the virtues of
scientific, mathematical, and economic thinking,18 Mark Cuban has proclaimed the
importance of liberal arts majors,19 Lee Kai-Fu has stressed the human qualities
of empathy and compassion,20 while Peter Thiel and Elon Musk have decried MBA
programs for stifling creativity.21 Interestingly, survey respondents split evenly on
the importance of soft versus hard skills across all demographics. Managers most
picked trustworthiness as an important soft skill.
Figure 8: Importance of Employees' Soft Skills

“We want to make sure that we’re trusted by the local community and do
the right thing for them ... That’s one of the reasons we’ve invested … in our
local San Francisco and Oakland public schools—it demonstrates back to the
community that we’re committed to them.”
Marc Benioff, Chair, CEO, and Co-Founder, Salesforce
THE RACE BETWEEN EDUCATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Education systems face the unenviable task of staying relevant (and funded)
with markets racing ahead. In a ZipRecruiter survey22 of college graduates’ most-
regretted majors, respondents indicated that some fields of study were too general
or impractical, had limited job opportunities, or did not train them sufficiently.
Concerns that formal education is too long, expensive, and unaligned with rapidly
changing market needs are not new. At any point in time, a third of graduates are
underemployed23 (i.e., over-educated in areas irrelevant to their jobs). Respondents
rated on-the-job training as the most important modality of skills training and a
university degree as the least important (see Figure 9). This is not exclusive to the
US. Preliminary research has found that it is primarily the sudden switch to remote
work in labor-intensive sectors that has sparked bankruptcies among small- and
medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) worldwide, rather than falling demand.24 Learning
and working are becoming less disparate and more interspersed, if not concurrent.
Thus, higher education institutions will increasingly need to partner with other
stakeholders to plug the skills gap.
Figure 9: Priority in Skills Training
Note: Respondents were given 10 points to allocate to any combination of the four options.

The role businesses play in skills training cannot be understated. Ninety-nine
percent of respondents said their firm offers skills training opportunities. More
broadly, firms serve as conduits through which employees can continuously learn.
However, many respondents felt that most training is useless (see Figure 10).
Perceptions further vary with income levels. Lower-income respondents were
likeliest to believe in self-reliance, though they were least confident about their
chances of succeeding in their careers, equally willing to attend training sessions,
and find them the most useful. This needs further attention, as low-wage workers
must be the targets and beneficiaries of training and should not feel like they have
to fend for themselves.
Figure 10: Attitudes towards Employee Training
Positively, there was a spike in work-related skills training when stay-at-home

orders started in March 2020 (see Figure 11), with 95 percent of respondents
saying it was beneficial to their jobs. This speaks to the receptivity toward just-in-
time learning. Indeed, many respondents participated in training to stay current in
their work.

Figure 11: Recent Training in Remote Work Tools

FUTURE
OCCUPATIONS AND
INDUSTRIES
Many studies and frameworks25 have already detailed which skills26 and jobs27
will see high demand in the future. On top of that, four important nuances must
be highlighted when predicting future jobs: course corrections in digitalization,
the productivity paradox, the multi-faceted nature of “future resilience,” and the
disaggregation of jobs and companies into skills and tasks.
COURSE CORRECTIONS IN DIGITALIZATION
The soaring interest in machine learning saw many organizations rebranding

themselves as tech companies overnight, rushing into data science without a good
grasp of the internal changes required. Forecasts based only on these trends will
conclude that data scientists look to remain highly marketable.
However, there are signs of an ongoing recalibration in the expectations of what

data scientists alone can achieve when a data pipeline and culture are not present.
In one jobs ranking, “Data Scientist” plunged from second28 to 22nd place29 in just
two years. In parallel, a Stack Overflow survey30 found that more than one in five
data scientists and analysts in the US are actively seeking a new job. This is but
one example of potential course corrections as mass digitalization progresses.
Thus, it is crucial to continuously update jobs forecasts and initiatives on future job
preparedness in response to market developments.
THE PRODUCTIVITY PARADOX
Related to this is the “productivity paradox”—that technological adoption since as

early as the 1960s has not led to visible signs of economy-wide productivity growth.
More optimistic quarters reason that productivity metrics and technological
diffusion are difficult to quantify precisely.31 Conversely, critics argue that barriers
to adoption can delay measurable gains by decades,32 and the low-hanging fruits to
improve standards of living, such as electricity, sanitation, and transportation, have
long been harvested. 33

“Diffusion is very slow … In an intermediate time frame, you’re still paying

[current employees] … and then there’s also just a long time to see the benefits
in many cases where you’ve so many steps to go through.”
Susan Athey, The Economics of Technology Professor, Stanford University (2020
Global Conference)
While the relationship between productivity and technology may seem obvious at
the firm level, overall adoption remains uneven. Thus, policies entailing the mass
distribution of technology—from investing in connectivity infrastructure to bringing
devices into lower levels of education—must be evaluated at the right level.
PANDEMIC RESILIENCE VERSUS FUTURE RESILIENCE
It is tempting to assume that industries that outperformed during COVID-19 will

continue to do so. But the opposite seems to be true (see Figure 12). The utilities
industry saw the smallest decline in employment during COVID-19 yet is forecast
to see the largest fall in employment over the next decade. Similarly, leisure and
hospitality have been hardest hit but expect strong employment growth by 2029.

Figure 12: Pandemic-Resilient Industries Not the Same as Future-Resilient Industries
Note: “Average Employment” averages the (seasonally adjusted) employment level, relative to January 2020, for each month
from April 2020 onwards, when the US witnessed the full brunt of COVID-19. 2019-29 forecasts were estimated before the
onset of COVID-19.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics (2021); Milken Institute staff calculations
Some essential industries were spared from lockdowns and hence maintained
employment levels. However, even essential industries cannot count on
government protection when facing longer-term socioeconomic and technological
forces. For example, even the Labor Department’s estimates of jobless claims have
been deemed inaccurate with mass layoffs.34 Thus, government work processes
themselves must also be continuously improved. The future of work is complex.
Maintaining headcount during COVID-19 does not guarantee these industries are
future-proof, while layoffs today do not necessarily indicate a broader decline.
TASKS, JOBS, AND COMPANIES
Looking even more into the future, increased digitalization, automation, and remote
hiring may further disaggregate the creation of goods and services. Similar to
the spread of manufacturing across global value chains, the individual tasks that
make up jobs may be split more among machines, algorithms, onsite, remote, and
freelance workers. This modularization35 of jobs enables increasingly fine-tuned

outsourcing. In the future, instead of aggregating generalist employees working
similar jobs, companies may increasingly look like online platforms synthesizing
the diverse efforts of specialists spread worldwide, each performing a unique
task across multiple product lines. Thus, even if a field is forecast to have high
employment prospects, the benefits accruing to local workers will depend on the
openness of labor markets and whether the US economy can remain dynamic
enough for workers to accumulate cutting-edge experiences for a competitive edge.

PREPARING FOR THE
FUTURE OF WORK
Policies to prepare for the future of work span across work-sharing arrangements;
redistribution; unemployment insurance; subsidies for work transition and
technological adoption; increased minimum wages; dignifying care-related,
social, and unpaid domestic work; as well as strategies for training, infrastructure,
and growth. Over the years, the Milken Institute has made many specific
recommendations to prepare for the future of work, many of which center on
reducing inequality. These include strengthening business-education partnerships,
financing access to education and skills training, catalyzing regional growth through
targeted investments, and evaluating regularly, and all of them usually interconnect.
STRENGTHENING BUSINESS-EDUCATION PARTNERSHIPS
Survey results have already shown that people attach the highest priority to
on-the-job training and that businesses play an indispensable role in this regard.
Nonetheless, a degree and relevant work experience are needed to be hired in
the first place. Partnerships between industry and higher education institutions
can address both these issues by incorporating flexibility into training schedules,
allowing students to gain real working experience, orienting curricula and research
towards market needs, and cultivating a longer-term talent pipeline from local
schools. The last factor is particularly important, as the shift toward hiring can leave
unprepared communities economically stranded.
The Capital CoLAB36 is one such partnership in the Capital Region, combining up-
skilling programs with digital technology credentialing and a feedback loop among
educators, students, and employers. The partnership aims to add over 130,000
job opportunities in five years. In a similar vein, pymetrics, Per Scholas, Infosys,
and other organizations have created a consortium of employers to provide a
free online training platform for those affected by COVID-19.37 Their “Reskill and
Restart” platform curates jobs-specific skills training based on each individual’s
skills and aptitude, and matches individuals with employers during training.
Other noteworthy partnerships have been compiled in this report38 by the Milken
Institute.
As disruption continues accelerating, the time horizon for reskilling will

continuously shorten, as will the shelf-life of new skills. Just-in-time learning may
become the dominant pedagogy, with much shorter courses laser-focused on task-
specific skills, flexible time commitment, agile curricula, and increasingly blurred
distinctions among educators, employers, and employees.

“We’re working with some of the nursing homes and our associations to see
how we can facilitate the use of technology.”
Jo Ann Jenkins, CEO, AARP (Conversations with Mike Milken Podcast Series)
“The Amgen Foundation has been really successful in funding innovative

approaches to STEM education … and fortunately we invested quite a bit of
time and effort in trying to make that available for distance learning.”
Robert A. Bradway, Chairman and CEO, Amgen (Conversations with Mike Milken
Podcast Series)
“In over 200 tier-1 middle schools, we’re starting to build 5G labs in those
schools so that they have hands-on experience ... [in] connectivity, technology,
hands-on learning for both teachers and students.”
Guru Gowrappan, CEO, Verizon Media (Conversations with Mike Milken Podcast
Series)
“Ignite interest in STEM for young people because we think that preparing the
workforce of the future is one of those really vital things.”
Barbara Humpton, President and CEO, Siemens USA (Conversations with Mike
Milken Podcast Series)
“Our online learning during this crisis is up almost 50 percent versus where we
were … We’re offering all our people a tech MBA.”
Carmine Di Sibio, Global Chairman and CEO, EY (Conversations with Mike Milken
Podcast Series)

FINANCING ACCESS TO OPPORTUNITIES
However, racing ahead in employee skills training without proper foundations

will produce unequal outcomes, if any. Over half of surveyed higher education
students39 found it challenging to access a computer during stay-at-home orders.
These barriers hinder the urgent need to cultivate familiarity with and curiousity
about STEM.
More significant efforts and resources will be needed to secure foundational

skills for as many people as possible, to empower the masses in individual
lifelong learning and constant reskilling. The Talent Finance Initiative40 is a multi-
stakeholder initiative that uses private-sector-led solutions and financial innovation
to better invest in workers. The program enables these individuals to develop skills
that keep pace with innovation, and in doing so, advance economic opportunity,
diversity, inclusion, and competitiveness. In 2018, Arizona voters approved the
extension of a higher sales tax, with the extra money funding the state's Technology
and Research Initiative Fund,41 a highly successful initiative focused on bolstering
education, training, and research. College Promise programs nationwide are gaining
momentum, with 360 programs42 to date providing up to full post-secondary tuition
funding for deserving students.
“I want kids … to be able to learn anything they want anytime, anywhere. Access
to devices, access to broadband, the internet has to be as ubiquitous as access
to water and electricity.”
Arne Duncan, Managing Director, Emerson Collective; former Secretary, US
Department of Education (2020 Global Conference)
“If I were president, one of the first things I would do is have an infrastructure
bill around getting fiber … to the educational systems, the federal government,
and the state governments.”
Eric Schmidt, former CEO and Chairman, Google (Conversations with Mike
Milken Podcast Series)

Balanced against longer-term education financing is the need to stem short-
term bleeding. Preliminary research has found that without fiscal stimuli, SME
bankruptcies would have doubled43 amid COVID-19. In particular, long-term
unemployment can be dangerous as it reduces the chances of re-employment,44
eliminating the channel of employer-provided, market-oriented training. Facts-
based discussions must occur regarding the extent to which government should
protect SMEs and safeguard employment.
“While the government’s done a pretty decent job on fiscal and monetary
stimulus in the first few months … we need another fiscal stimulus … [for] small
businesses and those who are facing unemployment … The people getting
impacted the most happen to be women and people of color.”
Ajay Banga, CEO, Mastercard (2020 Global Conference)
CREATING SUSTAINABLE, BROAD-BASED GROWTH
A vibrant economy is key to attracting further investments to finance these

opportunities. Long-term economic dynamism must ultimately be sustained
through productivity and innovation in broadly accessible and environmentally
sustainable ways. Public investments, guided by multi-stakeholder consultations,
can accelerate the market toward the jobs of the future and create jobs directly.
Technological disruption is accelerating. Investments should target sectors already
well-established and promising in the local economy to reduce both timelines and
resources required.
“There’s no singular approach to business any longer … We have to start

to realize that kids growing up in the inner cities don’t have the same
opportunities, and we have to invest there.”
Mark Cuban, Owner, Dallas Mavericks (2020 Summer Series)

“If we want to have dynamic economies, they have to be inclusive.”
Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director, IMF
(2020 Summer Series)
“The best things that the money can go to are those things that produce
productivity in a well-shared way.”
Ray Dalio, Founder, Co-CIO, and Co-Chairman, Bridgewater Associates
(Conversations with Mike Milken Podcast Series)
“As we ask workers to be lifelong learners and upgrade their skills, we also need
to upgrade the quality of our jobs.”
Sarita Gupta, Director, Future of Work(ers), Ford Foundation (2020 Global
Conference)
California’s STEM Core initiative,45 for example, assembles major STEM employers
to increase access to underprivileged populations. Catalyzed by public investments,
the initiative provides curriculum, paid internships, and research opportunities
and has enrolled over 300 students in 13 colleges across California. Colorado,46
Georgia,47 and Tennessee,48 among many others, also have workforce development
programs to reskill dislocated workers and out-of-school youth and to sustain
talent development networks. Such programs help seed local growth hubs, retain
talent, and increase access to opportunities. Impressively, business applications
nationwide nearly doubled in Q3 (see Figure 13). If Americans could channel their
strong entrepreneurial drive toward the future economy, it would strongly boost
long-term workforce dynamism and productivity.

Figure 13: Spike in Business Applications
Source: US Census Bureau (2021)
EVALUATING AND ITERATING
There remains a subtle balance between proactive versus evidence-based decision

making. The long timeframes inherent in education necessitate early, pre-emptive
decision making based on best guesses and limited knowledge of the future. While
close communication with industry can help, as explained above, the market can
also get forecasts wrong.
“What I would love more from the business community would be, yes, to
partner with us in education but also to challenge us and to hold us accountable
for us producing young people who are prepared with the skills they need
to enter the workforce … I worry far too often that businesses can now hire
internationally … That’s important for them to do, but I want them to have a real
stake at their local level.”
Arne Duncan, Managing Director, Emerson Collective; former Secretary, US
Department of Education (2020 Global Conference)

Hence, resources, however scarce, must be dedicated to evaluating program
efficacy. The 2019 Nobel laureates in economics, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo,
have shown,49 for example, that not all education funding is money well spent. And
preliminary evidence finds that students do worse50 in online education when their
educational institutions are inexperienced in remote learning and when the syllabus
lacks peer-to-peer interaction. Thus, programs, collaborations, and stakeholders
alike will need to think carefully and be flexible in determining what works best.
Funding initiatives, such as the aforementioned College Promise programs, could
be evaluated partly with employment metrics. In a similar spirit, Microsoft’s global
skills initiative51 combines data across LinkedIn, GitHub, and Microsoft to identify
in-demand jobs and their requisite skills. The company then plans to share data and
insights from this initiative to further drive innovations in public policy.
For example, with the somewhat overhyped data revolution, there has been a
proliferation of online courses and boot camps. These programs vary widely in
quality, cost, exam rigor, and admissions criteria. Stakeholders thus need to agree
on how to assess which courses are better and worth supporting. Accrediting
bodies may play a useful role here, but collaborations between education and
industry should not become hamstrung by middlemen, third parties, and vested
interests, nor devolve into a check-listing exercise.
“The concept behind [Industry Recognized Apprenticeship Programs] is that

rather than us in the government determining when an apprenticeship program
is satisfactory, there can be accrediting bodies. These can be community
colleges, these can be trade associations, labor unions.”
Eugene Scalia, Secretary, US Department of Labor (2020 Global Conference)
“We need to significantly shorten the dialogue between employers and

educational institutions like community colleges who are training the
workforce. There is too much noise in between, too many parties in between …
We need to better articulate competencies and skills to the employer as quickly
as possible.”
Eloy Ortiz Oakley, Chancellor, California Community Colleges (2020 Global
Conference)

CONCLUSION
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated job displacement and unemployment
trends initiated by advances in technology and automation. Emerging forces
affecting the workforce have only exacerbated existing social inequities embedded
in our pre-COVID economic landscape. Yet the fundamental dynamics reshaping
the nature of work remain unchanged. This new normal presents an opportunity to
recalibrate traditional workforce development models that recognize the long-term
return on investment in talent, skills, and people, resulting in enhanced opportunity
and social prosperity. Addressing these issues involves creating partnerships
between workers and employers, as well as educators who can provide the tools to
prepare people and companies for the ever-shifting needs of the new economy.
Revising this framework requires broader ecosystem participants to leverage

their networks and funds to support state and regional talent development
efforts. Forming cross-sectoral, regional employer collaboratives, for instance,
can align competency-based curricula to short-term critical workforce needs and
stretch public dollars. Educational institutions and employers must also expand
their networks and get creative with leveraging other training, operational, and
funding-related resources. In the long term, by investing in our talent pipelines,
these networks can advance an adaptable education-to-employment system that
supports sustainable careers in local industries.
Progress will depend not only on strategic thinking but innovative approaches
to operational funding that build on the traditional vocational and public-private
models that once existed in the economy but could not adapt with the times.
Place-based pilot programs focused on developing robust talent pipelines can use
existing networks and infrastructure but adjust them to the new future of work. By
implementing these pilots and then scaling them up as the infrastructure evolves,
resulting partnership programs can reduce costs, expand funding sources, leverage
organizational strengths, and create shared prosperity in respective regions.
Finally, the pandemic has also drawn attention to the notion of essential jobs, such
as health-care workers—not the highest paid but vital beyond doubt. Profound
stress and shortages have required adaptation and shown where society’s needs
are now and are likely to be in the future. As societies race to prepare for the future
of work, it is increasingly vital to ascertain both the obligations and opportunities
emerging in this shifting landscape and how we can ensure that both workers and
employers can meet their own needs and those of society and the economy.

ENDNOTES
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ABOUT THE
AUTHORS
Kevin Klowden is the executive director of the Milken Institute’s Center for
Regional Economics. He specializes in the study of key factors that underlie the
development of competitive regional economies (clusters of innovation, patterns
of trade and investment, and concentration of skilled labor) and how these are
influenced by public policy, and in turn, affect regional economies. On a national
level, he is heavily involved in issues of capital access for small businesses, including
serving as chair of the US Department of Commerce’s Trade Finance Advisory
Council. His areas of expertise include technology-based development, capital
access, infrastructure, the global economy, media, and entertainment.
Klowden was the lead author of “Strategies for Expanding California’s Exports,”
which examined the vital role trade and exports play in the state economy and
its underperformance relative to the country over the past decade. Further
work on trade and investment has included “A Golden Opportunity with China:
How California Can Become an Even Bigger Destination for Chinese Foreign
Investment.” He has also written on the role of transportation infrastructure
in economic growth and job creation in reports such as “California’s Highway
Infrastructure: Traffic’s Looming Cost” and “Jobs for America: Investments and
Policies for Economic Growth and Competitiveness.” He is a frequent speaker on
state fiscal issues and has served on multiple advisory boards on business growth,
economic development, and infrastructure. He holds graduate degrees from the
University of Chicago and the London School of Economics.
Quintus Lim is an associate of policy and programs at the Milken Institute. He

focuses on policy areas such as R&D financing, technological adoption across
domains such as health, food, agriculture, finance, and the broader economy,
and issues of ecosystem building. Lim holds a bachelor’s degree in government
and economics from the London School of Economics and is currently pursuing a
master’s degree in analytics at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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FUTURE OF WORK

Insights for 2021 and Beyond

The Milken Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank. We catalyze practical,

ABOUT THE CENTER FOR REGIONAL ECONOMICS

ABOUT THE ASIA CENTER

In partnership with Infosys

©2021 Milken Institute

• The COVID-19 pandemic is a double-whammy for inequality: The worst-off are

• This report highlights technology’s increasing impact on the workplace,

• Building on these findings, this report makes several recommendations to

» ccelerating regional growth through public investments that broaden

» financing access to education and skills training, including for

» strengthening business-education partnerships, including just-in-time

» regular and outcomes-based evaluation of initiatives, to continually identify

MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF WORK 1

However, with automation comes displacement. By 2030 in the US:

• McKinsey estimates that 16 million to 54 million workers6 may need to switch

• Oxford Economics forecasts some 2 million job losses7 in manufacturing due to

• PwC gauges that over a quarter9 of jobs could be automated.

MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF WORK 2

MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF WORK 3

Note: Shaded columns denote recession periods.

Civilian unemployment spiked by over 17 million in just two months. Small

MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF WORK 4

REMOTE HIRING AND JOB OPPORTUNITIES

Figure 2: Firms' Responses to COVID-19

Source: Infosys (2020)

MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF WORK 5

Figure 3: More Remote Hiring and Working during Covid-19

Source: Infosys (2020)

MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF WORK 6

“Diversity and inclusion is potentially enhanced by … remote work, the ability

“[Startups] no longer have to be in Zone A hiring cities … They’re able to go and

How many have capitalized on these remote opportunities? A third of respondents

MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF WORK 7

Source: Infosys (2020)

PRODUCTIVITY AND SURVEILLANCE

MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF WORK 8

Source: Infosys (2020)

Most employers expressed concern about collaboration, effectiveness, and morale

Figure 6: Trust upon Scrutiny

Source: Infosys (2020)

MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF WORK 9

Figure 7: Preferences Regarding Remote Work

Source: Infosys (2020)

INSIGHTS FROM MILKEN INSTITUTE EVENTS

MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF WORK 10

It is possible that worries about insufficient interaction drive managers to hold

It is also worrying that 97 percent of respondents believed their company would

MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF WORK 11

INSIGHTS FROM MILKEN INSTITUTE EVENTS

“The biggest collateral damage [of Covid-19] would be if we sleep through

Figure 8: Importance of Employees' Soft Skills

Source: Infosys (2020)

MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF WORK 12

THE RACE BETWEEN EDUCATION AND TECHNOLOGY

Figure 9: Priority in Skills Training

MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF WORK 13

Figure 10: Attitudes towards Employee Training

Source: Infosys (2020)