The Employment Problem

The Employment ProblemIn 2016, three billion people globally wanted to work. Most of them needed full-time jobs, but there were only 1.2 billion “good jobs”—paying jobs with employers for steady work that averaged more than 30 hours per week.2Underemployment and employee under-engagement were also challenges. Only 13 per cent of workers were engaged in their jobs, working with passion, and feeling a profound connection to the company. Of the remaining 87 per cent, 63 per cent were “not engaged” and lacked motivation. Outnumbering engaged workers, 24 per cent of workers were “actively disengaged,” openly showing unhappiness with work.3In 2016, almost 200 million people around the world lacked access to the basic skills required to participate in the global digital economy and earn a decent wage. Work using online platforms was growing by 22 per cent annually, compared with 3 per cent growth in jobs performed offline. However, many people were unaware of these opportunities and lacked the basic skills to take advantage of them.4Compounding the employment problem, technology platforms and applications using augmented intelligence were expected to displace or replace many of the current jobs over the near future. Routine repetitive activity such as legal searches for precedents would be conducted by robot assistants; customer interaction and requests would be handled by virtual assistants; and commercial driving (trucks, taxis, and delivery vans) would be performed by virtual drivers, using technology such as Waymo, Google’s self-driving car.Although these jobs would be replaced with technology, the technology required and created work in technology that would generate careers with new ways to create value. This was substantiated by historic trends that showed that technology created more jobs than it destroyed as people developed new services and businesses based on technological advances. LinkedIn envisioned its Economic Graph to be the connector for these innovations.LinkedIn’s FoundationsLinkedIn was founded in 2003 by Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Konstantin Guericke, Eric Ly, and Jean-Luc Vaillant. The company’s beginnings were humble, starting in the living room of co-founder Reid Hoffman.The founders imparted their core values to the project. Professional identity was captured in the LinkedIn profiles created by users, in the options for searching for other professionals and services, and in the contacts and networking features. Professional insights could be found on the service’s home page; in the associated Slideshare service; in the company’s blog, LinkedIn Today; in the groups users could form and join, or from LinkedIn-selected “Influencers,” they could follow. Ubiquity in ensuring access to LinkedIn wherever members worked was accomplished with mobile and application programming interface development.