Ménage à trois: Boardroom Bafflers, AI and the Employee

This last year has been pretty full-frontal with prognoses, predictions and lore-telling. When a stalwart declares that AI is likely ending (most) jobs sometime soon

What we at Glue hear is that our purpose – to bring happiness to employees - is under existential threat!

So as good stewards for our people, partners and clients, and to continue to be responsible custodians on behalf of our investors, we had to crunch publicly available data to develop an objective Glue point-of-view.

For the sophist, this is not meant to be a Carnegie-Mellon Uni rigored white-paper, as much as a data-dipstick expose to ascertain directionality for the ongoing AI-Employee where-to dialog. With a little help from our friends at © Vitruvia Capital, here are some takeaways where the ~10 year datum-trends from 2015-2023 are doing the talking.

So we thought to check employment trends in the US, given that AI has been main-streaming over the last decade, and stuff like IVR (meant to thin out human jobs) has been at it since the turn of the millennium. Here’s what we found:

Table 1: Total US Jobs and GDP 2015-2023

Jobs growth is parity to parity+ to GDP, so the case for AI job losses is as yet unestablished.

We took that to mean that the firms with the largest numbers of employees clearly had the most vested commitment to AI, and decided to investigate the average #workers trends for the largest firms US 20 firms

Table 2: Annual number of employees for top ~largest tech firms from 2015 to 2023

The firms x-dancing elephant, showed astounding growth in number of Employees as one can see from the table. But these are all hyper-growth firms! So we looked at the large money-center banks too, and the trend in FTE growth was similar. But they’re in consolidation mode you say. Sigh - okay we’ll boil the ocean I guess. Please block all of September on your calendars to go through the next Glue tome

Since the data was talking a different speak to the Boardroom Bafflers, we thought – maybe these large firms were PR hedging, and just getting folks to work less since the whole ecosystem must be that much more productive. Upsy-daisy

Table 3: Average # of hours / week per Employee ((Clockify (https://clockify.me/working-hours))​​ (BLS.gov (https://www.bls.gov/ces/))​​ (BLS.gov (https://www.bls.gov/cps/lfcharacteristics.htm))​.)

No PR strategy at work it seems. Despite the outrageous hiring growth, no change in hours/week worked. If AI was doing the work of several humans, that efficacy was yet to trickle down

Finally we resigned to the academics always knowing best and chose to investigate the evangelism of an academic who was also an entrepreneur and a distinguished fellow at the labor and work-life program of the law school of the most prestigious university on the planet! (whoa – Def Leppard’s 1-handed rock drummer Rick Allen has no solid on this force-of-nature!)

So we thought- maybe folks are being forced out of firms at a faster clip because AI is taking over?

Table 4: Unforced Employee Attrition Analysis

Nada

Oh we get it – they’re hiring lower cost people because these folks now have lower bargaining power because of the shadow-hand of AI?

Table 5: Average Annual Compensation / Employee, by Firm

Ummm – Nya. Seems folks increasingly getting paid more. But that’s inflation! Well- isn’t now when AI should start to unleash its human-replacement magic then? Da data?

As a final throw of the dice, we reckoned that the dominant futurist, with a specific future-tile on AI and the McCXO book of the year winner would know best.

Table 6: Annual US Unemployment Rates

And yet the U.S. unemployment rate reached historic lows recently. Specifically, the unemployment rate was 3.4% in January and April 2023, marking the lowest levels in 55 years. The last time the unemployment rate was this low was in the first five months of 1969. This with the (hotly debated) porous southern border…

They say the past is a good predictor or at least a guide to the future. So we dug into History:

We analyzed the top 5 Technological Disruptions of the Last 500 Years

1. Printing Press (1440s)

• Impact:
• Revolutionized the dissemination of information.
• Facilitated the spread of knowledge, literacy, and ideas.
• Enabled the Protestant Reformation, Scientific Revolution, and the Renaissance
• Cumulatively increased total number of workers through print profession.

2. Industrial Revolution (Late 18th to Early 19th Century Steam engine, mechanized textile production, iron making techniques.

• Impact:
• Transition from agrarian economies to industrialized ones.
• Mass production and significant economic growth.
• Urbanization and changes in labor systems and social structures.
• Cumulatively Increased total number of workers through manufacturing

3. Electricity and Electrification (Late 19th to Early 20th Century)

• Impact:
• Transformation of industries with electric power.
• Improved quality of life with electric lighting, heating, and appliances.
• Enabled the development of new technologies like telecommunication, computing, and more.
• Cumulatively Increased total number of workers through electrification expansion

4. Computing and the Digital Revolution (Mid 20th Century - Present) Transistors, integrated circuits, personal computers, internet.

• Impact:
• Revolutionized communication, data processing, and information storage.
• Enabled advancements in every sector including healthcare, finance, education, and entertainment.
• Birth of the information age and digital economy.
• Cumulatively Increased total number of workers through new digital expansion

5. Internet and advent of AI (Late 20th Century - Present)

• Impact:
• Transformed global communication and access to information.
• Enabled new business models, social networks, and digital marketplaces.
• Significant impact on politics, culture, and social interactions.
• This is the end
• Beautiful friend
• This is the end
• My only friend, the end
• MorrisonBoardroom Bafflers

Bottomline:All the data, triangulate as we might, simply could not corroborate the flatulent takeaways of the lofty. Then we found this sobering take from the almost-president "We need to move to a new form of capitalism, where people are more important than money. Otherwise, AI and automation will continue to take away all jobs."

Viola! Clearly - the best of our leaders seem already on this transformational journey, if we are to believe the data. And this has profound implications on the immediate future of the employer-employee relationship.

So it is not the AI-ship, but the anything-goes-employees-will-stay-for-paycheck ship that has sailed. Leader firms will dedicate significant mindshare to employee wellbeing through

• Mental Health Support Programs
• Physical Wellness Programs
• Healthy Eating Initiatives
• Work-Life Balance Programs
• Community and Social Wellness Initiatives

And wherefore our mission comes alive – to play our part and build the largest AI-wellness platform on the planet

Gosh – how much love can one young firm glue-together for 165 million US Champs?

Pebbling for you and cheerleading ourselves hoarse!