Zandi-WIP

I don’t think anyone will be surprised by the April jobs numbers when they are released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics next week. We’ve had enough warning.

We’ve already seen more than 26 million people across the country file for state unemployment benefits in the past five weeks since the COVID-19 pandemic took hold of the economy.

A new wave of claims will be reported in a few days.

Economists, including Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, expects to see the official jobless rate for April at somewhere between 15 percent and 20 percent, which would be the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

“And that doesn’t even do justice to the financial suffering here,” Zandi tells me in this episode of the Work in Progress podcast. That, he says, doesn’t include a large number of people that will be pushed out of the workforce and won’t even be counted as unemployed because they will have given up looking for another job. “There’s a broader measure of underemployment that includes those folks, that would be closer to 25 percent.”

The picture right now looks grim, but Zandi believes that although there will still be job losses in the coming months, “we’re at the peak of the problems. This is the apex of the crisis right here.”

Zandi says, barring a second wave of COVID-19 infections, we will see hirings start to pick up in the next two to three months. It will probably begin with new jobs added to construction and then manufacturing.

“We’ll come back. It’s just going to take us a while to get really back. It’s going to be a slog. It’s going to be one step forward, two steps back. Two steps forward, one step back. It’s going to be a process.”

I also got his thoughts on the impact the pandemic has had—and will have—on the skilled workforce and education.

The fallout from all this means “there will be broader changes in the labor market as a result of this that may require changes in the way we train and educate our workers.”

“You usually see the folks that are most skilled, most highly educated, best trained, that are the last to lose their job or hours or income. And if they do, they’re the first to be rehired.”

It makes sense to employers. “They’re going to be the most productive and it makes most business sense for employers to hire those folks back. And I’m sure that’s going to be the case here.”

We discussed so much more about jobs and the economy, and what a recovery will look like You can listen here, or you can find the Work in Progress podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

Subscribe! Thanks for listening.

Episode 130: Mark Zandi, Chief Economist, Moody’s Analytics
Host: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch, Melissa Panzer, and Ramona Schindelheim
Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0.

You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.