Azeem Azhar

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Let's get started with what the headlines say.

You know, the headlines for a decade have talked about the threat of automation to the world of work.

I think it's now been 12 years since my friend Carl Frey and his collaborator Michael Osborne published that famous paper

about the way in which machine learning might affect human tasks.

And as we move into 2025, we are starting to hear stories.

The entry-level job market in particular seems to be collapsing.

When you look across your data at Revelio and give us a moment to understand what data Revelio looks at and gathers, what is the most accurate description of what's happening in the labor market?

That is such a fair summary.

And I'm in danger of agreeing with you too much.

So you're going to allow me to push back on a few of those observations.

But let's unpick some of the...

The points that you raised, you talked about Eric Brynjolfsson's paper.

You've also talked about this idea of managers becoming more risk averse.

And if you're more risk averse, taking on board a millennial who might need their kombucha and early break on a Friday afternoon to go for a meditative stroll is higher risk than whipping the corporate wage slave in their 50s for another few hours in the week.

That's a decent picture.

But the other thing that you drew up was just how complicated and multi-factor labor markets are.

And one of the things that strikes me about labor markets is that there are so many forces at play from interest rates to the effect of the pandemic to

political uncertainty impacting how long bosses are willing to make investments for, that it's really difficult to unpick those causes.

And the starting point for that needs to be the data that you can look at and that you can make sense of.