Ramona Schindelheim with Leo Hindery, CEO of Trine Acquisition and former CEO of AT&T Broadband (Photo: WorkingNation)

I am joined in this week’s episode of Work in Progress by Leo Hindery, former CEO of AT&T Broadband and founder and CEO of Trine Acquisition.

We’re talking about what he calls the “real unemployment numbers” and why he thinks broadband for everyone is a “civil right.”

Every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases its report on the state of the nation’s workforce — the percentage of people actively looking for work but can’t find a job (the unemployment rate), the number of unemployed people, and the number of employed people.

“There are about six-and-a-half million workers who are officially counted as unemployed.  That does not count the tens of millions of women and men who don’t make enough living to be secure in their livelihood, on behalf of their families,” says Hindery.

But there are many men and women who are not counted in those headline numbers — the “discouraged” workers who have given up looking, the “marginally attached” who have not searched in the past four weeks, and the “part-time-of-necessity” who can’t find full-time jobs or have had their hours cut back.

All of these under-the-radar numbers are in the monthly BLS report, but rarely make it into the public conversation about jobs in this country. Hindery says if you want a better picture of who is working and the quality of their jobs, you have to talk about them. So, every month since 2006, Hindery has put out his own analysis of the employment data.

As a veteran of the cable industry, Hindery believes that there is another employment issue we should all be discussing — broadband for everyone, which he calls a civil right.

“Civil rights traditionally has been about race and ethnicity, and gender and faith, and orientation. It needs to also include this technical phenomenon called the internet…If the reality of broadband is education, health care, job advancement, job alteration to meet the changing environment and the changing economy, then every family that you leave behind is decimated into the future.”

More about broadband as a civil right and closing the digital divide in this WorkingNation article.

You can listen to the entire conversation online or you can find the Work in Progress podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

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And we hope you enjoy the conversation.

Episode 110: The Real Unemployment Numbers
Host: Ramona Schindelheim, WorkingNation Editor-in-Chief
Producer: Anny Celsi
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.