I was wondering if there's any new insights in terms of trends you're watching or practices that you're watching that you could share with the audience.

Sure.

Well, so outside of community colleges, I think the two areas are one that we just discussed, the whole range of work-based learning options, including tax credits or subsidies for incumbent worker training.

That's one area.

And the other area is what people call sectoral training.

Community colleges do some of that, but outside providers do it too, where different providers really specialize in one sector of the economy, whether it be healthcare or advanced manufacturing or IT or logistics.

They learn to do that really well, and they interact a lot with regional employers in those sectors.

And I wonder if you were in the policymaker's seat, what one thing would you be thinking about that ties into AI and the policy considerations as it's coming forth?

What kind of warning sign does that send? Or is this a normalization after pandemic-era over-expansion?

over-expansion?...

I, I think for the tech sector, for companies like Amazon, uh, some of it is normalization, and that's been going on for a few years already.

Um, but some of it is they've invested very heavily in AI, uh, with the idea that they're gonna- that's gonna save them on labor costs, and they wanna start seeing the returns on that investment.

So, so they're announcing some cutbacks.

Uh, more broadly, we're not seeing an enormous number of layoffs, but, but they are a bit higher, certainly relative to a year ago, uh, and even relative to last month, you see some uptick in layoffs.

Uh, most of the decline has been new hiring rather than layoffs, but it's something to keep an eye on.

Is this a, a cyclical cooling, or is something more structural happening beneath the surface here?

Like, much of your life work has gone towards that end, right?

That, that's right.

But, but at the same time, like, if we were talking about the minimum wage right now, I would say these are the positives of w- minimum wages, especially when they go up to $15, $20 an hour, but these are some of the negatives.

How do you balance those out and, and get to sort of an optimal place? And the long list that you read I- is instrumental, because again, if you take any of those in isolation, they might not be a bad thing.

It's that 10 or 12 items, um, plus Buy American rules.

Uh, you know, it likely slowed down the progress on, on those three big bills.

And, and by the way, I supported those bills wholeheartedly.

But, but the other thing is in, in an emergency when a section of highway, uh, essentially blows up, maybe that's one thing and you'll relax it, but isn't this established, I'm not going to s- say Deep State, stakeholders who just will not give up this idea that the only way to get the climate justice they want, the labor justice they want is to go through these very procedures? 'Cause if not, you're selling out important stakeholders, and especially for Democrats, they're very sensitive to that.