The Economics of Work with Ben Zweig9 Sep

David Deming - What's Happening to Young Workers, and What College Should Do About It

For the first time in recent history, new college graduates have a higher unemployment rate than the general population. The causes are tangled, the implications are serious, and universities are caught in the middle.

In this episode, Ben sits down with David Deming, Harvard economist and Dean of Harvard College, to work through what's driving the shift and what it means for how we think about education, expertise, and careers.

Topics covered:

Why the graduate unemployment rate is elevated and why remote work, AI, and post-pandemic labor hoarding are all suspects that probably worked together
How remote work accelerated AI automation by first digitizing and codifying knowledge work
Why you can beat AI on depth but not breadth, and how deep expertise still produces something AI doesn't have: taste and judgment
What taste actually is, why doing the work yourself is the only way to develop it, and why taking the summary first destroys it
Why college needs to move toward applied learning, and why that's not the same thing as vocational training
How academia is secretly closer to entrepreneurship than most people expect

About David Deming: David Deming is a professor of economics at Harvard University and Dean of Harvard College. His research focuses on education, skills, and the labor market. He writes the Substack Fork Lightning and hosts the podcast The Context Window.

Check out David’s substack: https://forklightning.substack.com/

Check out The Context Window Podcast: https://thecontextwindowpodcast.substack.com/

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