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Protecting the vulnerable worker now will speed up economic recovery

A conversation with Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning Economist
By Ramona Schindelheim
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Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist and Columbia University professor, is my guest on this episode of Work in Progress.

The ability of the economy to return to where it was at the end of 2019 is going to become more and more difficult—and the long-term effects on the economy will be more devastating—if we don’t do something now to protect the most vulnerable workers among us now, Stiglitz tells me.

The most vulnerable are the home health care workers, the retail clerks, restaurant workers, delivery people—anyone who makes the current minimum wage, he says.

“One of the real ironies is that workers we deem ‘essential’ are among the people who are the lowest paid and are at the greatest health risk. Let me just emphasize that inequity because it shows up not only in low compensation, but they are getting the disease because they have preexisting conditions, and they are more exposed. So the inequities are one on top of the other,” he says.

Stiglitz argues that health care is important economic factor, equal to livable wages.

“One measure of the health of a society is looking at the health of the people. If the people aren’t healthy, you don’t have a healthy workforce…Health inequalities in the United States are enormous, much larger than in other advanced countries.”

We discussed how the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed some of the already-existing weaknesses in the labor market, including underemployment. While the headline numbers showed a 3.8 percent jobless rate in the early part of the year, the fact that there were so many people who were struggling by on low-wage jobs, low-skill jobs, working multiple jobs, was often overlooked in the conversation around employment.

So, what will the workforce look like—and what needs to be done to restart the economy—post-pandemic?

“Clearly the pandemic has really made us aware that we don’t have to do as much traveling as we used to. We can do a lot of things through Zoom and other technologies. But it’s also made us appreciate how valuable real person-to-person interactions are. We miss them. So we’ve learned both,” he tells me.

“I don’t think we’re going to move totally onto Zoom, or totally leave our brick and mortar stores, but there’s undoubtedly going to be a shift. That change may actually make the problems that existed before the pandemic even worse. It will reduce some of the demands for the unskilled labor and at the same time, help those who have the skills and the kinds of jobs that can be done through the Zooms and these kinds of technologies.”

Upskilling that under-skilled labor force is necessary, but it’s not sufficient, Stiglitz says.

“We have to upskill, but we also have to change the rules of the game. 40 years of writing the rules of the game to advantage those at the very top. We now have to reverse that and rewrite the rules to make our economy work for ordinary Americans.”

That, Stiglitz argues, will mean raising the minimum wage for essential workers and providing health care for all.

If not, he says, “I see a lot of suffering. One of the things we know is that that suffering has long term consequences. The children in the families are going to suffer and when they suffer, that means our productivity in coming years will be lower than it otherwise would have been.”

It won’t just be the individual who suffers, he argues. “From the macroeconomic point of view, the ability of the economy to return to where it was at the end of 2019 is going to become more and more difficult. It will be longer and longer and longer before we get back to December of 2019.”

You can listen to the full conversation with Stiglitz here, or download the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.

Photo of Joseph Stiglitz courtesy of Daniel Baud and the Sydney Opera House. 

Episode 150: Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning Economist, Columbia University
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

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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.

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