cc  >> Introducing our featured  speaker, Steve Pogorzelski  is a 1983 UW graduate.  He majored in journalism and  advertising.  He recently left Monster.  com in January after working  there for 10 years.  He held a variety of positions  including president of Monster  North America, group president  international and executive vice  president of global sales.  He also had 14 years of  advertising agency experience  prior to joining Monster.com.  Steve is also the coauthor of  Finding Keepers which was  published in hard copy by McGraw  hill in January of 2008.  He has been a frequent  commentator on global labor  markets and has appeared on  numerous national and local  television outlets.  He has been quoted in dozens of  newspapers and on national radio  stations.  Steve has been named to the  Daily Cardinal newspaper hall of  fame and was honored by the  University of Wisconsin for  distinguished service, an annual  award given by the School of  Journalism and Mass  Communication. 

 So let's give a warm welcome to  Steve Pogorzelski.  [APPLAUSE]  >> Good afternoon,  everybody.  There's two spots when you give  a speech that you try to avoid  at all costs.  One is right after lunch.  [LAUGHTER]  And the other one is  the dreaded hangover spot at  9:00 a.m.  on a Friday morning.  So I'm going to do my best to  keep you awake.  But before I do I just want to  say thank you.  It's an honor and privilege to  be here today to talk to you.  I think that time is one of the  most precious commodities in the  world. 

 And the fact that you give me an  hour of your time means a great  deal to me.  And I'll work very hard to make  sure you feel that time was  worthwhile to you as well.  When the Wisconsin Alumni  Association approached me about  six months ago to talk about  labor markets, it was a very  different situation.  And timing certainly is  everything, isn't it?  So let's take a look about  what's happening right now in  the labor markets, and if you  excuse me for just one moment.  So I'm very good at  preparedness.  I'm giving three speeches and I  had the wrong speech in front of  me.  [LAUGHTER] How's that for  candor.  So I would have been talking to  you about being liberal arts  majors if we would have  continued on the one in front of  me.  So anyway, let's look at today's  labor market.  The unemployment rate is 6. 

 5% in October.  It was 4.  8% a year ago.  1.  2 million jobs have been lost in  America this year.  Half of those jobs have been  lost in the last three months  alone.  Yesterday the Bureau of Labor  Statistics released the weekly  unemployment claims numbers.  And they were at the highest  level of unemployment claims  since September 11, 2001.  The Department of Labor then  also looks at what's called a  four week moving average of  unemployment claims because they  want to take out fluctuations  that can skew the numbers based  on natural disasters or weather  related things.  The result is that the four week  moving average of unemployment  claims in this country is now at  the highest in 17 years. 

 And there's no end in sight.  The labor markets and labor  market economy is a lagging not  a leading indicator.  So nobody really knows how far  this will go from an  unemployment standpoint.  Our guess would be between 8%  and 9% before it bottoms out.  So with that as the backdrop,  which is not necessarily  optimist, it is my job to you to  talk about the changing nature  of work and employment.  Well, what I'm going to do is  I'm going to focus on three  areas.  The changing demographics in our  country that will have  tremendous impacts on the labor  markets.  A notion that we developed at  Monster called candidate  empowerment and certainly the  value of human capital to  companies.  As I move forward, many of you  probably have worked for a  company that put out an annual  report or you've read annual  reports and how many times in  that annual report did the  chairperson or the CEO write,    human capital is our most  important asset.  Are you all familiar with that  phrase?  And they probably mean that. 

 But an asset is also a financial  instrument.  And on a balance sheet an asset  can be written off, it can be  disposed of, it can be deemed  obsolete and it can be  commoditized.  So human capital, while it's a  tremendous competitive advantage  to companies, is also viewed as  a disposable asset.  And whether right or wrong, the  fact remains that the way we're  doing business in this country  and the fact that human capital  become an asset that can be  disposed of has fundamentally  changed the relationship between  the employer and the employee  forever.  So what's been the candidate  response?  The balance of power has been  shifted between the employee and  the employer.  How can you say that when  unemployment is at 6.  5%?  Well, it was a lot easier to say  a year ago but the fact remains  the pendulum goes back and  forth, shifts between the  employer and the employee, but  it still in some extent favors  the employee and it will greatly  favor the employee in the  future.  So it's difficult to fathom that  top quote in today's economy.  But if you look at what  companies are doing, they're  doing things that a year ago.  Job sharing. 

 Telecommuting.  Casual work days.  Elder care.  Daycare.  Employee gyms.  Upgraded cafeterias.  Fitness centers.  Dry cleaning services.  Companies wouldn't do that if  that pendulum hadn't shifted.  They didn't do it a generation  ago and they didn't do it two  generations ago. 

 And the other fact that's really  come out of this human capital  as a most important asset is the  fact that employees are not more  committed to their careers and  less loyal to organizations.  And we'll talk about that a  little later on when we look at  generational changes in tenure.  That is how long people stay at  their current position.  One of the things that  underscores this last bullet is  the reasons why people leave a  job.  So when companies report on exit  interviews why people left the  job, the number one reason comes  out as money.  Because if you quit a job it's  really easy to sit in front of  the human resource officer and  say I'm leaving for more money.  Because that's tough to argue  with, right?  But the gallop organization did  a major poll a couple of years  ago and they asked employees  directly without any human  resource interference and they  said why did you leave your job?  The number one reason people  left their job was their boss,  meaning I didn't like his or  her.  The number two reason was  challenge, I wasn't getting  enough challenges.  Number three was I didn't have  enough opportunity.  Money was fifth on the list. 

 And that's a much different  relationship between employers  and employees than we've seen in  the past.  The result of some of the things  and shifts that occur in the  labor market is that now people  are making money on what could  be called the war for talent,  that's McKenzie's term.  The battle for brain power.  The quest for quality.  All these things are pervasive  throughout the human resources  industry and there's many names  associated with the coming  talent shortage in this country  and also around the world.  But we came up with another term  in our book and we call it a  talent tsunami.  And I'm hoping that you can help  me answer this particular  question.  Business is in a worldwide  competition to acquire a  diminishing resource.  It's more valuable than oil.  It's more critical than capital. 

 The resource can be bought but  not owned.  It's found in every country but  it's difficult to extract.  Without it, companies are doomed  to mediocrity.  And the United States alone  companies spend $250 billion a  year trying to acquire it.  Does anybody know what it is?  It's employees.  It's you.  It's talent.  We operate in an incredibly  fluid and dynamic market for  skilled workers, which we'll  talk about a little bit later  on.  And despite today's weak  economic environment, take heart  that anybody who's in the labor  market today at particularly  generation Y is part of the most  valued generation of skilled  workers that the world has ever  seen.  I gave a talk yesterday to  freshman and sophomores about  what majors they should choose  and what the labor market will  look at when they graduate. 

 Generation Y will have the most  opportunities of any generation  of most industrial modern  American business.  The United States has the best  institutions of higher learning,  and of course university of  Wisconsin is an example of that.  And they're getting stronger.  And they equip students with  highly advanced skills and they  act as magnets for global  talent.  While playing a critical role  innovation and spinning off new  businesses.  And that will help the next  generation of workers in ways  that we haven't fundamentally  seen over the last several  decades.  And three forces really set the  stage for this change.  We'll talk about changing  demographics.  And predictions of a coming  labor shortage are based on  demographic data.  The premise being that we're on  the cusped of a major baby boom  retirement age. 

 Baby boomers will start to  retire in record numbers and  many people had predicted that  that would begin in 2008 and  2009.  With this economic crisis, that  horizon will be shifted out.  But it's not a question of if,  it's a question of when baby  boomers start to retire in  record numbers.  And also in this country,  combined with this baby boomer  retirement, we've been  experiencing declining birth  rates over the last several  decades.  And it's pretty easy from  Economics 101 to understand  supply and demand.  People are leaving in record  numbers and there's not enough  new workers to fill the gap  which creates the potential for  a major skill shortage in this  country.  The hiring slow downs we saw in  2001 and 2002 saw a brief pause  in talent shortages but a longer  term global shortage of skill  talent quickly reappeared.  We'll get through this economic  malaise and that crisis of  talent shortages will appear  once again.  So just going into demographic  shifts a little bit.  Many of you do remember what  happened in the late 1990s. 

 Unemployment went below 3%  during the dot-com boom.  And that was the level of  employment that many economists  never predicted.  They felt that unemployment  below a certain percentage  certainly around the 2.  8% we saw, would lead to run  away inflation and it didn't.  So it challenged the notion of  full employment in the United  States.  It was really a great time if  you were in the labor market and  it was certainly a very  fortuitous time for us to launch  Monster.  And the reason for optimism in  the long run is found squarely  within these laws of supply and  demand.  So as baby boomers start to  retire, again, we've had several  declining decades of declining  birth rates in the country.  And America's already  experiencing acute skill  shortages in a number of areas.  There's not enough healthcare  workers. 

 And if any of you have gone to  see a doctor or an HMO or a  hospital recently, you're  acutely aware of that.  And one of the reasons that  there's an acute skill shortage  of nurses and other healthcare  practitioners is that there's an  acute skill shortage in  education.  The average age, for instance,  of a nursing professor is 57.  That's the average age.  The average age of an assist  nursing professor is 53.  We have a shortage of nurses not  because there's a shortage of  interest among students, there's  not enough teachers to enlarge  the programs.  We also have acute skill  shortage in this country with  accounting and auditors.  In a post Enron WorldCom world,  accounting lost the prestige it  once had as a profession.  So in post Enron WorldCom world  -- came into place which put  pressure on companies to hire  more accounting and auditing  professionals to do the work  required by the legislation.  With this Wall Street meltdown  and the mortgage crisis, they'll  be more legislation which will  require more accounting and  auditors and there's fewer and  fewer kids becoming accounting  majors. 

 So already we're starting to see  what these skill shortages look  like in this country.  And it's not necessarily just  for white collar workers.  If you go talk to those folks at  the ASC, and that's that little  logo when you go to get your car  fixed.  It looks like a couple of gears  and it's in blue.  You have to have a certified  auto mechanic on site in a lot  of states in order to stay open.  50% of the people in that  occupation will be leaving in  the next five years.  Nine out of ten apprenticeships  within that field go unfilled  every year.  So what happens?  It's actually a pretty good time  to be an auto body mechanic or  an auto mechanic.  And you're going to pay a lot  more to get your car fixed and  you're going to wait longer in  the future than you do today.  The shifts that we're seeing are  not just the United States  they're global shifts of talent. 

 Competition for top talent is an  international phenomenon.  According to the Society of  Human Resources right now the US  already absorbs 50% of the  international labor flow.  Moreover, 40% of industrialized  companies in the world are  reporting shortages of skilled  workers.  China has a 1.  3 billion population and it's on  the verge of a major economic  movement upwards that you're all  aware of.  So if you have children in  college or in high school here's  a tip, tell them to take  mandarin.  Western companies will pay  anything to get a western  educated college student who  speaks mandarin to move to  China.  But all these global shifts are  going to have a tremendous  impact on the fluidity of labor  and that is the ease at which  people with work across borders.  Country are going to have to  begin to enact legislation to  make it easier for people to  move from one country to another  to work.  And it's our prediction in the  next 20 or 30 years that people  will not necessarily think of  themselves just as American  workers but they'll think of  themselves as global workers. 

 And they'll move from country to  country wherever the challenge  or opportunity presents itself.  Another thing that's compounding  this skills gap are the  shortages of workers in the  United States is the declining  participation of high school  students going to college.  So what we saw for in the last  two decades is that there's a  42% increase in the number of  high school graduates who went  to college.  Now what we're seeing that's  flattening.  Over the next two decades we'll  only see a 7% increase of the  number of high school graduates  who go to college.  So we've got fewer and fewer  high school graduates and now  fewer and fewer are going to  college.  And you do the math to  understand the impacts that will  have on the labor force.  Now there's a wide variety of  guesses and they are estimations  or guesses to what this skill  shortage will look like in the  United States.  Wall Street Journal put out an  article a year ago that said by  2012 America will be short 5  million skilled workers.  The American Society for Policy  Development says it's 12  million. 

 Who knows.  Nobody, these surveys were done  before the economic impacts  we're now facing.  But it doesn't matter if it's 5  or 12 or it's 1 million, we're  going to be short skilled  workers in this country.  I put this chart in to talk  about managing future  generations because I thought  that many of you either employ  or hire or manage people from  generation Y.  And you can see right now that  baby boomers represent 42% of  the American workforce and  generation Y only represents  22%.  But generation Y really scares  the heck out of a lot of people  because the expectations of this  generation are so much different  that the expectations of my  generation or your generation.  These kids will hold on average  eight professional jobs by the  time they're 32 years old at the  current trend rate.  They will make multiple career  choices, changes.  They'll be more committed to a  career and less loyal to a  company and the power will shift  in their direction.  In the next five years 10  million gen Y-ers will join the  workforce not including  immigration. 

 And by 2010 gen Y will be  greater than gen X in the  workforce.  And these people will have  tremendous impact.  If you think about gen Y and the  way that they approach careers,  they have much higher  expectations of themselves.  They have high expectations  first and foremost for  themselves.  This is a generation that's  preconditioned for success.  Think about how tough it is to  get into the University of  Wisconsin today than it was in  1979 when I got in.  In 1979 to get admission to this  fine university you had to  graduate in the top half of your  class at a Wisconsin high  school.  Valedictorians don't get into  University of Wisconsin today.  So we've been conditioning these  kids to have much greater  expectations for their future  and they also have an  expectation to move in the  workforce and identify problems  and solve problems and major  challenges right away.  And thank goodness that they do. 

 Who founded Google?  Generation Y.  Who founded Facebook?  Generation Y.  Many of the new internet and  many of the major internet  companies in the world that are  changing the way that we work  and the way that we access  information were started by kids  in generation Y based on their  changing expectations.  And if you're an employer one of  the things you're going to have  to get over is the stigma of  changing jobs.  In my generation and perhaps  your generation if you moved  around every three years you  were considered a loser or you  weren't going to be employable.  If you think that way today  you're going to miss out on some  of the most talented aspects of  the workforce.  Because they don't expect to  work for you forever.  They're going to work for you as  long as you provide challenge  and you provide opportunity.  They don't want to work for you  for 30 years and you can't have  a stigma around them moving  around.  Now if it's based on poor  performance or they got fired  from the last three jobs, that's  different. 

 But they'll approach their  careers and we'll have to  approach them in a much  different way than we ever have   before.  So the second way that sets the  stage for this big changing  workforce is candidate  empowerment.  First and foremost, candidates  are more empowered or employees  are more empowered today because  of the internet and I think  recruiting has a lot to do with  it.  Prior to the internet recruiting  was one-directional.  If you had to hire somebody you  put a people wanted sign in your  window or you tacked it to a  tree or you put an ad in the  newspaper and you expected  people to come to you and job  seekers were conditioned to  apply.  The advent of resume databases  which are substantial in this  world it's made recruiting  multidimensional.  My former company has 64 million  resumes from around the world in  its database.  It has 235,000 companies who log  in everyday to search that  database to see if candidates  are willing to work for them.  So now recruiting has now become  multidirectional.  And distribution has opened up  so people have a wide array of  choices than they ever did  before. 

 And let's pile on social  networking.  Sites like LinkedIn who have  millions of people in their  database which enables people to  network and say I have a job for  you or you know somebody who  wants this job has created a  much different dynamic than  we've ever seen before and that  empowers candidates in a way  that's never occurred before.  So times have changed, right?  1955 the man in the gray flannel  suit.  He stayed at his employer for 27  years on average.  If you graduated from college in  1955 you worked on average for  27 years for your employer.  Today it's barely four years and  it's going down.  Now, like I said, a college  graduate in 2006 will have hold  8 to 12 jobs over their career  in make multiple career changes.  One of the things that we found  at Monster is the fact that 50%  of our business came not from  companies increasing their  payrolls, it came from companies  having to replace turn over.  That is people leaving their  jobs.  If would have started this  business 20 years ago, we would  have been out of business   without this phenomenon  happening. 

 And it's only going to get  stronger.  The other thing is the career  ladder is not a career ladder  anymore.  It's now a lattice.  If you think about it, you look  at my grandfather, for example,  my grandfather worked at the --  plant on the south side of  Milwaukee for 38 years.  He never had any expectation of  leaving.  The company took care of him.  They trained him.  He got a raise every year.  He got a promotion every two or  three years.  He got the big retirement party  with a gold watch. 

 That's gone.  That's not what today's workers  want.  It's really what the career  lattice is based on is this  notion that was developed by --  who is probably one of the best  recruiters in the world called  mass career customization.  And corporate lattice system  encourages continuous  collaboration between the  employer and employ to design  customized career paths.  Taking into account both the  changing needs the employer and  the employee.  So the pattern is not a straight  line.  It can go horizontal as well as  vertical.  So why a lattice?  We've talked about the knowledge  worker short fall, right?  The estimates between 5, 6, 12  million, who knows shortage of  workers in the next 10 years.  But other things have happened  too that are created a different  movement within the workforce.  Changing family structures. 

 Only 17% of US households today  have a husband who works outside  the home and a wife who does  not.  17%.  And that's down 63% from a few  generations ago.  We've got other changes that are  contributed.  There's a decreased rate of  marriage in this country,  delayed child birth and the  increase in dual career families  has provided, has promoted  people to declare the end of the  traditional work life.  If you look at more and more  women are entering the workforce  and women are actually entering  the workforce today better  educated and with higher grade  point averages, on average, than  men.  More than half of all managerial  jobs today are held by women.  The ranks of women in the  workforce has doubled since  1970.  Yet most women don't work  continuously throughout their  lives and they do have some  interruptions in their careers  and the career ladder punishes  them.  And for companies in order to  retain this top talent that  compromised of women executives  and other women who contribute  to the success of companies,  they cannot have women be in a  career ladder. 

 Because they'll lose them and  they can't afford to lose them.  And also men are spending more  time with their children than  they ever did before.  A survey this year that came out  and asked senior executives,  male executives, the following  question, would you turn down a  promotion if that promotion  meant spending less time with  your children?  If that was asked to my father  that would have been a  no-brainer.  He'd say know.  Right?  They wouldn't have even thought  about it.  57% of the men surveyed said  they would consider turning down  a promotion if it meant less  time away from their families.  Now that's a very marked shift.  We've talked about generation X  and Y and one of the things that  they have which is much  different from previous  generations is they have greater  expectations and demands for  work life balance.  And again a career ladder  doesn't fit that.  And the last is technology. 

 Technology has changed the  workplace and will continue to  change the workplace to the  point where workplaces will  become less physical and more  virtual.  And I'll give you a good example  of that.  We were in 63 countries at  Monster and we were developing  new products and platforms on a  24/7 continuous basis.  We had a development center in  Prague, in Maynard,  Massachusetts, in the hydrobod  and in Beijing.  And they worked collaboratively  around the clock, they didn't  have to be in the same room and  they worked on the same  projects.  And they had the same output and  the same goals and the same  objectives.  That's the nature of where work  is going in many professions and  many occupations.  Also mass career customization  really is dependent on these  four things when people look at  how they're going to grade their  careers in the future.  And the four dimensions are pace  which really addresses how  quickly an employee is slated or  desires to move up, and they may  not want to move up.  Work load addresses the quantity  of work and work life balance. 

 Location schedule combines where  work gets done and where it  doesn't get done.  And role refers to the job title  description and  responsibilities.  At -- in particular and other  savvy employers who need to  recruit and obtain top talent,  they're working together to  customize careers on a  individual basis with their  workers.  In the past we did not have  customization of our careers.  It was a ladder, plain and  simple and you had to stick it  out.  Companies have had to change  dramatically based on the  factors that we've talk about  before.  Now to summarize some of the  realties of the marketplace.  We've seen different numbers in  changes in tenure but it's  dropping.  And stigma around job dropping  is also changing.  Graduates will have multiple  jobs. 

 The remaking, restructuring, and  resizing in consolidation of  companies has steadily  increased.  Employees don't believe you're   going to take care of them  anymore.  You may have all the best  interest, their best interest at  heart but they don't think  you're going to take care of  them for life and frankly they  don't want you to.  And traditional job security by  now it under tremendous pressure  but layoffs really are only part  of the story.  We've talked about the stigma of  changing jobs.  We've talked about more and more  people are leaving traditional  work regions for a new company  which is me.  One of the other aspects we're  seeing in the workforce is this  notion of being a free agent.  And more and more workers  believe that they're free agents  and they'll work for a staffing  company or they'll go into  consulting or in a project and  work for themselves.  But now they're going to set  their own hours.  They're going to choose what  projects they'll take. 

 They're going to choose when  they'll work and they won't work  and if you don't like it, don't  hire me.  Because I might want to work for  you for six weeks but then I'm  taking three weeks off to go to  Costa Rica.  Take it or leave it.  I'm in business for me.  And you know what?  They thrive and they're  successful.  Companies are forced to take the  work.  And actually it works out great  for the company.  We hired a lot of free agents at  Monster.  You know what?  Because our business went in  waves.  We're a highly cyclical  business. 

 We had projects that came and  gone and people wanted to work  on a project for eight weeks and  didn't sit on our payroll as a  fixed expense where we had to  pay for their overhead and  healthcare benefits, that worked  out for us.  They got what they wanted and we  got great work for a lower cost  without having to be a fixed  expense.  And Monster's not alone.  There are many companies who  feel that way in terms of being  able to embrace this free agent  nation.  The next great wave for me is  going to be elderpreneurs.  Anybody heard that expression  before?  People are going to retire at an  early age compared to their life  expectancy.  It used to be that your  retirement age and your life  expectancy age was a fairly  narrow gap.  It can be as much as 20, 25, 30  years now between the time that  you retire and the time that  you're expected to not be able  to work, to perish.  So what we're seeing is now that  people who are wise and  experienced and want to work but  on their own terms are starting  their own businesses,  elderpreneurs or retired  entrepreneurs.  They enter into consulting  arrangements. 

 Ernst and Young has a program  where they bring back retired  partners and retired accountants  on a regular basis to mentor and  to work on projects.  And they can set their own  hours.  And what Ernst and Young has  figured out is that that talent,  that expertise they can't afford  to lose but they know those  people don't want to work full  time.  So if they want to live six  months of the year in Florida  and come back and work for six  months and only three days a  week, they'll be more than happy  to have them.  And we'll start to see more of  those work arrangements take  place as baby boomers start to  retire.  We're also seeing the fact that  telecommuting is becoming a  higher and higher percentage of  the workforce.  And it's particularly attractive  to people who have issues with  daycare or elder care.  Where driving in traffic in  America to a physical location  is not palatable.  But companies need that resource  and that talent and that  expertise and technology allows  them to work at home and perhaps  only come in once a month or  once a week.  And the percentage of people who  telecommute has been doubling  every eight years. 

 And will continue to increase in  the future.  So that your living room or your  den may become your cube in the  future.  The way that people look at  work, not only in terms of a  career ladder or a career  lattice, but in terms of  satisfaction has really changed  a lot.  I don't know if you can see this  but I sat next to this guy at  Midwest Express yesterday.  But the guy in the middle, his  shirt says my job sucks.  And American workers are ticked  off.  A Monster survey we did for the  book, we found out that 50% of  the thousands of people we  surveyed, 50% were not  completely satisfied with their  jobs.  71% were poised for another  opportunity if it came along.  And 56% of the workers we  surveyed regularly looked at new  job opportunities.  Regularly meant at least once a  week. 

 That's a very scary number.  It's good if you're Monster and  you're another job board.  But if you're an employer, it's  your employees, right?  And the whole notion of job  seekers and their behavior has  changed as well.  If any of you were in human  resources for the last 30 years  you've been talking about that  people are either active job  seekers or their passive.  An active job seeker is somebody  who is applying and wanting to  get hired for new jobs and a  passive job seeker is somebody  like my grandfather who wasn't  going anywhere for 35 years.  The biggest group now, the  middle, is 70% are poised.  And that is people who are  neither, who are looking for  another opportunity.  They're happy where they're at,  but they're always going to be  ready for another opportunity if  it comes available.  That means they're always in the  workforce.  And that's very important and if  you're an employer because I'm  telling you again, and nobody  likes to hear it and they always  say, well, it's not my company. 

 I've said this to so many CEOs  and they say it's not my  company, and I can pull up the  database and say I've got  120,000 of your resumes in our  database.  It's your employees.  [LAUGHTER] The last wave that  sets the stage for change is the  value of human capital within  the workplace.  The third great wave is the  increasing value of talent to  the bottom line and the  diminishing power of other  assets to make a difference.  So one by one the former  advantages in business fall.  Capital used to flow much more  freely in the past we'll see if  it continues to flow freely  after this meltdown.    But innovation can be quickly  copied.  It can be pirated.  Workplaces become more and more  decentralized.  So location matters less. 

 And former monopolies fail to  compete.  GM, Ford, Chrysler.  These structural changes don't  mean the end of unemployment as  we know it, but when a business  fails or moves, people lose jobs  but they do mean that talent  becomes remaining competitive  advantage in the world.  Talent is the only remaining  competitive advantage in the  world.  And recession only delays the  reckoning.  The structural challenges and  the structural shortages of  talent will last much longer  than any potential pause in  hiring.  Including the one we're  experiencing right now.  Talented candidates ultimately  have more choice of employers  anywhere in the business cycle  and anywhere in the world than  they've ever had before.  And the ability to attract and  retain talent is an asset  through both boom and bust.  And it's very interesting to see  companies still hiring as they  layoff. 

 In the last recession we saw  that at Monster and the current  CEO of Monster express that on  MSN the other day.  Is that companies even though  they're laying off 10,000 people  in one division are still hiring  people in critical skills areas  in another.  So when they say they're laying  off 10,000 people that's the  gross number, it's not the net  number.  Which we've never really seen  before.  Because talent is such an  advantage.  So to summarize what we're  seeing in the workforces,  candidates are more empowered  and they're empowered because  they hold the keys to the  kingdom.  And if you're the parents or the  grandparents of a generation Y,  tell them the following: It's  going to be painful for the next  two to three years.  Nothing can change that.  We've seen over the last three  years the number of fortune  1,000 companies hiring college  graduates drop precipitously and  it's going to get worse this  year and probably the year  after.  But longer term, no generation  will have greater potential and  greater opportunities for career  success and happiness than this  current generation based on  changing laws of supply and  demand. 

 Those laws of supply and demand  are changing the way the  candidates think about their  careers.  It's that lattice over that  ladder.  It's the fact that I'm more  committed to my career and I'm  less loyal to you and I'm going  to move around as long as I have  challenge and opportunity and my  boss isn't a jerk.  And that talent, finally talent  is the last remaining  competitive advantage.  And the companies that have  moved ahead in the world, and  you see it probably expressed  greater at Google than anywhere  else, are the ones that is will  create the greatest wealth.  So that's my explanation of the  changing nature of work and  employment.  Not a sunny, optimistic picture  today but long-term it's going  to be very interesting ride as  American companies and global  companies adapt to these changes  and generation Y comes hopefully  to save our butts, prop up  social security and Medicaid so  when we all retire they've  created the wealth that we need  so that we don't all have to  become elderpreneurs unless we  choose to do so, right?  So with that said, are there any  questions I can answer from the  audience?  >>(Inaudible)  >> The question was,  what happens to the relative  importance of pensions in an  environment where people change  jobs on a frequent basis.  Well, I think, 401Ks now, you  can go a certain amount over.  So I think a 401K instead of a  pension would be much more  popular because it's easy to  roll over without any tax  consequences, and if you look  it's pretty interesting, an  add-on to your question.  One of the hottest occupational  categories in terms of growth  over the next ten years, in the  top 5, is the need for personal  financial advisors, it's one of  the top 5 growing occupations in  the United States. 

 And I think it speaks to that  people will have to take more  control over their personal  finances, particularly as they  prepare for retirement, visa  vis, the eventual, potential  demise of the pension system as  we know it.  Pensions are already less and  less important.  But in companies, don't want  that kind of obligation in their  books, either.  Thanks.  Yes, please.  >> Since a lot of the jobs that  are going to be in existence 10  years from now or maybe in five  don't exist today, how do you  advise young people in high  school or middle school about  what they look for?  >> Can we turn this off?  Can you all here me?  The question is, what would you  advise people to major in?