In A "Gig Economy," How Do We Define Work?

When we talk about the current realities of work and how it’s changing, there’s one thing we can all agree on: to survive, learning new skills — or switching jobs entirely — will likely be essential.  And as daunting as that prospect may sound, this isn’t the first time the American worker has had to adapt to get ready for the workforce of the future. With that in mind, what lessons can we learn from the Great Recession to help everyone rebound more quickly?  This week, we hear from Amy Goldstein, a staff writer at The Washington Post and the author of Janesville: An American Story. Her book focuses on the closing in late 2008 of the oldest-operating GM plant in the country and how workers in the area fared in the five years that followed. One of her findings is that workers who went through retraining programs often ended up worse financially than those who didn’t. Chip and Caroline dig in to what went wrong and what lessons can be learned.

Leaders across tech are convinced that diversity in the workplace — that big issue that you can’t go anywhere without hearing about — will be a non-issue within five years. The problem? Very few are doing anything to make that prediction come true. This week, Chip and Caroline discuss the results of LinkedIn’s latest diversity in tech survey, which found that despite the seemingly daily revelations about sexual harassment in tech, venture capital, entertainment and politics, how both investors and founders are treating these issues is largely unchanged. New America CEO and President Anne-Marie Slaughter joins them to bring more context to the results and share her take on how heightened media attention on abuse can benefit the American workplace.

America needs more people working in home healthcare, and we need them quickly. With the U.S. elderly population doubling from 40 million to 80 million Americans in the next 20 to 25 years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is predicting that “personal-care aide” will be the fastest growing job category in the next decade. There is just one problem: Working in home healthcare is unpredictable, underappreciated and underpaid work. This week, Chip and Caroline explore the fragmented market of home healthcare by speaking with entrepreneurs trying to fix the system and workers trying to make a living within it. Seth Sternberg, the CEO of Home healthcare startup Honor, joins Chip and Caroline to discuss why he thinks scale — and thinking of caring for the elderly as a bi-partisan issue — could solve the problem.

In Silicon Valley, working “9 to 5,” is for the weak. Startup founders celebrate never sleeping. Venture capitalists brag on Twitter about not taking a vacation for over twenty years. But while the tech industry may be getting all of the attention, workers across industries are feeling burnt out, overworked and stressed. This week, LinkedIn Managing Editors Chip Cutter and Caroline Fairchild talk to two entrepreneurs based out of Chicago who are bucking this trend within their own startup. Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson are the co-founders of Basecamp and have been speaking out against the tech community’s extreme work ethic for years now. Fried and Hansson give their take on why working around the clock now seems necessary, and share the simple ways they think the American work week can be improved by using technology differently.

If you speak to workers across the country, a lot of them will tell you that the economy is broken. Everyone from cashiers at grocery stores to doctors in hospitals have shared stories with LinkedIn about striving for more, but the deck not being stacked in their favor. In this episode, Chip and Caroline talk to future of work expert and O'Reilly Media Founder Tim O’Reilly about why exactly that is. Explaining how the economy is optimized for corporate profit rather than for the American worker, O’Reilly unpacks some key lessons from the technology industry that he thinks can be applied to “debugging” many problems plaguing the world of work.

The manufacturing industry is changing fast, and American workers are feeling the impact on their jobs and wages. As more and more manufacturing jobs move to AI, to robots, or abroad, this episode explores the future of the industry and how Americans are and will continue to be effected. Chip and Caroline talk to manufacturing workers around the country and to McKinsey Global Institute Chairman and Director James Manyika about the increasing skills gap, humans and machines learning to work together, and the potential for the US to return to the #1 global manufacturing spot.

In the wake of Hurricanes Harvey & Irma, communities across Texas and Florida are facing a combined $200 billion in damage. There is a dire need for immediate rebuilding efforts, but there is already a labor shortage in the construction industry. Some construction workers are seeing this disaster as a potential "gold rush" for job opportunities, and construction companies and contractors are already rushing to the disaster zones to find work. In this episode, Chip and Caroline speak with the Chief Economist of the National Association of Home Builders, Robert Dietz, on the current state of construction and the potential for automation. They also speak with several construction workers who are considering relocating to find work after the storms.

162 million people in the US and in Europe engage in independent work as a primary or supplemental source of income, and this number is growing quickly as people are taking advantage of tech-driven opportunities. But the opportunities are changing just as quickly, and while there is a desired flexibility to this type of work, there is also a lack of security or benefits. Chip and Caroline speak with Stacy Brown-Philpot, the CEO of TaskRabbit, to discuss what, if anything, society and education are doing to keep up with this growing and changing gig economy.

More than five million people in the U.S. make a living driving taxis, buses, vans, trucks Uber’s and Lyft’s. Some drive for money part-time, while others do so full-time. But some self-driving car companies are predicting their technology will be on the open roads, en masse, as early as 2020. That means that millions of people could be out of work in less than three years. In this episode, Caroline and Chip speak with more than a dozen drivers about how they are thinking about their career prospects as we headed toward a driverless future. Padmasree Warrior, the CEO of self-driving car startup NIO, also joins them to bring the perspective of an executive who’s helping bring this technology to market.

Tech titans Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg sparred recently about how artificial intelligence and automation will impact the future of work. Musk says the robots are coming for everything — not just our jobs — and Zuckerberg says that type of thinking is “pretty irresponsible.” How can two leaders arguably more at the forefront of this technology see its real world implications so differently? In this episode, Caroline and Chip get out of the theoretical and into the practical on what the next tech revolution will really mean for work across industries. Box CEO and Co-Founder Aaron Levie joins them to share why he thinks tech will always create more jobs than they will destroy. Meanwhile, Chip talks with workers and employers across the country to see how exactly automation is impact the workplace today.