Workforce development is the mom’s apple pie of American politics. On the Milken Institute Global Conference stage, it brought together Ivanka Trump and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, a longtime Democratic insider.
At the conclusion of the luncheon plenary, Schmidt called all of the panelists — including Trump as well as the CEOs of Visa, EY, and Lockheed Martin — “American heroes.”
The focus of the panel was creating pathways for both early and late-career workers into high demand jobs that don’t necessarily require an expensive education, especially blue-collar trades, which have more openings than available workers. Schmidt opened the panel with a question to Trump: “Why can’t I find an electrician?”
The President’s daughter has been working to re-orient the resources of the federal government from subsidizing four-year college degrees toward career and technical education.
“Education and learning generally needs to be rebranded,” Trump said. “This idea that to achieve the American dream you need a 4-year degree is so steeped in American education that it’s taking people off very viable career pathways.”
(Workforce development advocates generally agree that’s a fine goal, but have voiced concern that White House budgets have thus far proposed reducing the total amount of federal funding that goes into workforce development.)
The CEOs on the panel also talked up their investments in apprenticeships for young workers as well as re-skilling programs for their longer-term employees. They also celebrated the rise of more flexible work opportunities, such as EY’s GigNow platform, which the company uses to outsource short-term tasks.
“There are all these people who would like to work but can’t work in a traditional structure for a number of reasons,” Schmidt said, remarking on the rise of Uber.
Of course, there are also downsides to the gig economy, including a lack of workplace protections and benefits available to traditional employees.
It’s also worth noting that while few disagree with the need for better workforce education and greater visibility into available opportunities, labor experts also say that the longtime deterioration in the condition of the American worker also has to do with a loss of bargaining power because of the deterioration of unions and degradation of labor standards.
Schmidt himself took fire after his philanthropy launched an initiative to find a “$1 billion unicorn to grow the middle class,” which he defined as an idea that would raise the wages of 100,000 workers by $10,000 a year by 2021 — something that unions have long done for millions.
