on counting the cost of focus on nigeria to recessions and for years growing in security and unemployment, oil companies packing up and leaving even the threat of piracy in the gulf of getting just what nigeria needs to do to confront multiple challenges. counting the call on al jazeera the this is al jazeera, i'm getting obligated with a check on your world headlines. a fire is hampering to search for survivors in the rubble of the building a lot. on thursday in florida, at least 5 people have died and 156 others are still unaccounted for. as hope said, for anyone being found alive, it's emerge that concerns were raised about the building years ago. heidi joe cast reports from surf side in miami,

florida. somewhere deep beneath this rubble of fire is making the near impossible task of finding survivors even more difficult if you were there the morning after. you didn't see it smouldering like it is now. the stench is very, very depth and it obviously is created quite quite an obstacle. the search for life was briefly pause to allow firefighters to dig a protective fire trench. they still don't know what's burning or if the smoke is toxic, yet they press on. the biggest thing here is hope that's what's driving right now. in reality, the likelihood of finding more survivors in the rubble diminishes with each passing hour. the agonized families are waiting in a nearby hotel for news of their loved ones who were likely embed on thursday, when the building collapsed in the middle of the night. i'm concerned about my mom . i wonder if you miss the thing. i wonder if the quality of us or

investigators say it may take months to determine what causes the collapse, but a recently surface engineering report on the building may contain some answers commissioned by the buildings management. 3 years ago, the report found major structural damage to the building, steel and concrete support, and a major error in construction trapping water around the underground garage. multimillion dollar repairs had been scheduled to begin soon. we are obviously very interested in all of the evidence that's coming to light and we're going to be including it and are what happens after the rescue. and in the meantime, we're taking action to make sure that other buzzing through the county has announced any immediate government review of all older buildings. the picturesque island on which the seaside residence is sit is partially man made and may be sinking. and now is the sight of devastation. heidi joe castro al jazeera sir

side, florida. johnson johnson has agreed to pay more than $230000000.00 to settle claims over an opioid epidemic in new york state. the drug make her says it will permanently end manufacturing the distribution of the painkiller in the us. the company denies wrong doing and insist it had already stopped selling opioids. the u . k. health secretary has resigned after breaching social distance in guidelines. mat hancock had been under intense pressure after a newspaper obtain footage of him kissing and embracing a woman in his office. supporters of peruse 2 main political opponents, 7 holding rival rallies in the capital. lima socialists pedro kasteel had claim victory in this month. presidential elections after the official account gave him and nero lead, but his rival, right when capable kimori has made unproven allegations of voter fraud. palestinian security forces have confronted protesters in the occupied west bank as anger grows

over the death of a prominent critic of the palestinian authority. the news are bananas, death in custody. for 3 days of demonstration, there are demands for international inquiry and the resignation of palestinian president must have been as family says, he was dragged from his home on thursday and he was beaten. at least 4 people have been injured after security forces, open fire, and processors in lebanon. people have been storming banks and offices of power companies and tripoli and site on anger is growing over the government handling of a devastating economic crisis. turkeys president has laid the foundation stone for a controversial canal that will link the black sea in the sea of murmur, a roger play bird one says can all assemble will save the city future and is expected to be completed in 6 years. will have 4 news right here on i'll just 0

after the bottom line. thanks for watching. ah me. i am steve clements. i have questions. why are so many americans refusing to go back to their old jobs? and this is creating a labor crisis. let's get to the bottom line ah, of all the side effects of the corona virus pandemic. this may be the one that affects the economy. most millions of american workers are staying away from the service jobs that actually make america run. that's retail stores and restaurants, truck drivers, you name it across the board. businesses say they're desperately looking for new employees and there are millions and millions of job openings. but folks just aren't interested in some places you can get $50.00. that's a lot just for showing up for a job interview and others, you get

a $1000.00 signing bonus. fast food and gas stations are offering double the national minimum wage in some places, but there still aren't enough acres. economists say this is really slowing down america. he can amik recovery from the pandemic, and it's driving up inflation. meaning the cost of everything is going up. but why are people reassessing their lives after the global pandemic? and deciding that, staying at home with their family or just retiring, is more important than their old job, or are they happier to stay at home and receiving unemployment check rather than work as many republican governors are saying. today we're talking melissa swift, the global leader for workforce transformation at the management consulting firm, corn, ferry, and jeremy robins, the executive director of the research and lobbying group, new american economy. thanks to both of you for joining us today. let me just start out and ask melissa right now. we have this picture. it's very interesting, after talking for so long about those workers who were displaced during this pandemic. we're now getting to the other side of this, and we're seeing

a lot of folks not lining up to take those jobs back. is that because they're feeling a change in work life and work quality life quality as needed? or is it a function of, you know, they've been receiving a lot of bail out money and they, they're making their, doing better not working than working? well, it's always going to be a balance, right? it's going to be, how am i rewarded for doing this job versus what's in this job? right. so it's very easy to look at the kind of how am i rewarded, right? so that's the unemployment benefits that do we need to pay for more, et cetera, et cetera. but the more interesting side is, what's in this job? and i think through the pandemic, what indifferent job has changed. so for instance, if i'm a restaurant worker and i now feel like i might, you know, i'm in a jurisdiction, we're not a lot of people are vaccinated, right? i feel like i might still get both that, that calculus change is how i feel about my job. similarly, if i'm a retail worker,

i'm having to argue with people about where math, that emotional labor. and in some cases it folks have been physically endangered. and that changes how i think about my job again. so that those scales where you balance what's in my job versus what i get paid for. it really do change. and then there's some of the intangible, you know, if i'm going into a workplace where there are fewer people, right. and i'm not getting that camaraderie that sits on one side of the skills to . and i think that's what's interesting is it's easy to kind of look at the compensation aspect, but the job side is kind of where the action is. i think one of the other question, jeremy, i've been thinking about a long time that we've come out of 4 years of a presidential administration. i think i'm probably under stating there ambivalence about immigration into this country. but as we have looked at a lot of the jobs that, that are not be the oftentimes there's a mix of, you know, young people college students. but we also have a lot of immigrants who want to come this country. and these are a lot of the jobs that they do, you know, on farms in and, you know,

labor and in restaurants and service jobs. and so i'd love to get a sense of whether or not, you know, we walked into something that the pandemic began to show. guess what? we really need immigrants. yeah, that's a great point steve. and i think one thing that became clear in the pan demi was his idea of the essential worker. and who were the people that were fundamentally important to getting our economy to work into keeping us safe and keeping food on our place and keeping goods moving and, and long before the pandemic. we knew we had a skills mismatch, right? there have been, if you look at survey after survey from the bureau of labor statistics, there are always 56000000 jobs that we can't bill because the skills that we meet are different than the skills that americans have. in the latest survey, it's over $9000000.00 jobs, $9300000.00 jobs as of april at up a 1000000 over the month before. because we simply don't have the skills we need where they are. the one thing that america has,

it's going to make us rebound from that can damage better than just about any other country, though, is that we have really robust immigration. we have people who are coming here to work with a different set of skills, who are more mobil, 4 more willing to work. tough jobs when they 1st get here, partly by recessive, partly by the fact that we're selecting for people who want to work. and that's a huge benefit, but as you said over the last 4 years when there's been a real crackdown on immigration, some of that has slowed. so at the same time that americans are becoming less mobile, to great competitive advantage that we have of having people come in and work and regenerate, the economy has slowed in a really dramatic fashion. we have right now and tell our audience over 9000000 unfilled jobs. this is a record high in the united states. as you look at, i also know i'm and i know people on all sides of this question. i know a lot of people who say, you know, we've now gone digital, they have a very different kind of social contract they want with their employers. they may not have been able with, through the absence of child care or, you know,

schools being shut down to sort of manage that home life. but they love their time with their children. some do and, and others are kind of looking at that whole question of how can they negotiate a new deal? do you think we're going to see a lot more of new deal negotiating? melissa? absolutely. i mean, we are certainly when you get a dramatic labor shortage, right? that really empowers the individual work. and i think we're going to see some interesting push pull over what work should look like going forward. the reality is that the kind of traditional office construct didn't serve everybody well, right? to serve a certain subset of the population pretty well. but if you're, let's say, a working mother who has to sneak out early, right to take care of your kids. if you're the only person of color in your office and you don't feel included, there's kind of bunch of ways that the traditional construct wasn't working. and so now with some actual kind of power on the workers side because of the shortages,

i think we're definitely going to see a renegotiation. i think what's interesting is that the rhetoric that c e o level is so different than what you see in survey after survey worker level. and i'm fascinated to see how that plays out. to be honest. if you were to give advice to an employer, i have a friend who has about 90 employees here in washington, d. c. and she was saying she's beginning to talk to her people about coming back to the office and working but what they really want. and she kind of, you know, sarcastically smiled, she said, no, they want to have mondays and fridays at home, which of course, you know, makes nice for day weekends if you go so i guess what, if you would advise an employer, would you, would you push them to say, hey, give them tuesdays and wednesdays, or wednesdays and thursdays as opposed. they're trying to work time into free time . it's certainly what we're seeing. i mean what we're saying there's a fulcrum point around 2 to 3 days a week in the office. and generally those days are not monday and friday, but you know, i think that the bigger picture is also the flexibility and understanding who

really needs to be in the office. right. does your work demand that you'd be in the office and looking at some of the interdependencies, you know, i say my group has to be in, but this other group that we work with all the time, they're not. right. so does my group have to be in and re the pressing on the work, not just kind of trying to snap back to the prior reality, which we're not living in anymore? the one, the one thing that i did that quickly is just to we need to experiment. i mean, i think one thing we're learning, even our own organization, is that there are huge benefits to work at home. i mean, i'm doing this for my children's play room right now, right. and i have those extra commuting hours to, to do more work, get more things done and take care of life. but they're also hugely loops, right? we're how do we have the office cooler conversation where ideas are generating? if you're not going out for lunch, when your team is seeing each other, only in meetings and not in these other organic conversations. and i think it's what we're struggling with and the businesses we work are struggling with this. how do you do both? how do you have

a balance that doesn't assume that when people are working from home, they're not being productive because a lot of ways, i think what this year shown is that people can be more productive working from home in some ways. but how do you also facilitate all the things that happens when you bring people together? and i think that's one of the certainly in the, in the idea generative innovation economy. that's where so much of the, of the sauce happens. jeremy, thank you for that. one of the things i've been trying to think about is the mathematics of this. so about 2 and a half 1000000 jobs in american, the restaurant sector wiped out, gone, you know, who knows, they'll come back, but, but right now they're gone. and other 2 and a half 1000000 people have chosen to retire, take retirement benefits, benefits and move on. and, you know, travel, hang out with their grandchildren, you know, do all other things. and i think, you know, when to begin looking at, it was interesting that we just had a debate recently about what the national minimum wage should be and that national minimum wage today is 7 dollars and 25 cents the debate was whether we take it up to $15.00 or $11.00. well, i've been driving across

a lot of western states that have been very opposed to raising the minimum wage. ah, and guess what? dunkin donuts, $15.00 an hour offered sheets auto, auto centers and gas stations and convenient stores. $15.50 an hour. these are big numbers to people who previously were working at fast food joints for $7.25 an hour . so it is that debate about the minimum wage now moot, is it silly? given the fact that the, that the market price is, is now double that it's a great question. i mean, i think, i think certainly people are going to show that you can pay a higher wage and still run businesses. but you're going to see some businesses that will struggle with that. i think one of the really interesting debates when you look at those jobs is not even those jobs themselves, but the broader jobs have been those industries. when you look at that, you mentioned 9000000 jobs open in april. well, when you look at the jobs where the fastest increase in those jobs and that in that journal, labor statistics report, the biggest growth was in accommodation,

restaurant, hospitality. so the industries that had been the hardest hit but better now coming back. and especially when you look at the, in, within those interviews, there are some really good college educated jobs too. but those aren't going to exist if you can't fail the really hard jobs. the night and weekend jobs, the cleaning jobs are cube, a prime star jobs. and so those are ones where i think certainly you're going to see or rejecting of like, what do we have to pay? what do we have to do to get workers, how we've changed the jobs and, and restructure them in a way that works for all workers? let me go ahead. go ahead. melissa. no, i was gonna say just something on that point, which i think is a fantastic one of this idea that job changing work is changing. i think this was happening under the surface for a while and what we got out of public was an acceleration that people really do want their work to be structured differently. and now that we have the opportunity to do it, right, let's, let's keep going with it. there is

a belief that people want to do good jobs and at the same time, you also had a large population that was kind of pens up to retire but working longer and longer and you're getting that population saying ok, i am going to pull the trigger on retirement bus police, what was kind of artificially inflated supply of talent out of the market. and so really part of what happened was that there were a bunch of things that were kind of creeping up on happening. and then they happened all at once. well, i mean, talk to you both. most you 1st and we'll just say i find a very i, on a, at some level, both of you were thinking about workforce transformation about what it takes in a new economy. and i have to tell you before cove it hit before we made this big jump from really what was still an analog world to a digital world. we were talking about digital skills. we were talking about the coming disruptive technologies that were going to, you know, transform work, transform the workplace, and a lot of people were going to be put out of work if they didn't keep up with that

level of skills that we were going to have automated trucks, ah, economists vehicles and you know, we would see this uber driver force and truck force. right. but if you go out right now, correct drivers get such a premium in getting trained and out. there it is. a, it is a great time. if you're a truck driver, but i'm just sort of interested, are we in a, in a kind of a moment away says for a certain kind of low skilled job that all of a sudden we need and will these other digital transformation issues come back as that's what i find interesting is we're, we're not talking about those high and high skilled jobs. we're talking about regular folks that may be not educated and up to the data in terms of, you know, digital skill set. melissa, well i think part of what's interesting is that we bought about those jobs in terms of binary, right? but one day there's a human driving, a truck, and then the next day, right, there's a truck driving a truck. and what actually happened is the pace of automation is kind of crept up. so the sort of computerized component of being

a truck driver is much greater than it used to be. right? it's a, it's a continuum, not kind of a fall off a cliff. and i think that's part of what's interesting, you know, working in a, in a starbucks right. there are far more automated computerized components than there used to be, but the job isn't gone yet. and i think that's the trend that we're going to see as the interesting thing about a lot of these jobs we've gotten very fixated on, like, let's say, you know, building software, right? a lot of software building is going to get automated in the next decade. and what we think of great jobs, the folks are supposed to go into those jobs are actually going to go away. so i think it's kind of interesting to then think about ok. automation is human job change, but then other human can tie to come in. i think what we see when jobs got automated is that it also create space for kind of more emotional labor, empathic labor, you know, the pieces that only humans can do. and i think it'll be very interesting to see what jobs get created in that part of the economy. jeremy say what you like,

but i want to know are we going to have a future where we can have emotional and empathic robots? i'm sure we will. i mean, i think we can't even imagine what's coming, and i think that's the point i wanted to mix. i think melissa's point is fabulous, but we're really bad, or predicting what's gonna happen with automation, right? we've had automation for 30 years. it's been accelerating in a real way, and it's always gonna take this job. and it is, i mean, there $8000000.00 truck drivers who are going to, there are going to be self driving trucks and, and all that workers. and i think by amazon factory in the hundreds of thousands or millions of people that are being played there, that will be robotic. and those people, those jobs will be replaced. but, but what will come next? right. i mean, before the recession, we were at 4 percent unemployment after 30 years of automation. and so you think about, the question is not so much i think it is. where will there be enough jobs, but will they be good jobs? and for people, especially people who are not going to be who don't have the, the education level or ability to be part of their, the creative economy, which i think is going to be a lot of the spoils of this automation. for the jobs that exist,

especially the service people jobs, which there will be many are they going to be jobs or you can make a living wage? i think the jobs that are safe and that you can support your family. and so i think those are gonna be the questions that are going to dominate far more than will there be jobs at all? you know, i thank you, but i want to just, you know, be very careful here about one thing because i think we've been focusing on on, on those who haven't got, i mean there are more than 10000000 people who have gone back to work who have you know, take up this load and they are back, you know, in the service jobs and doing things so, so we see that we were running a deficit. but also those people in depth. i just want to give them a chance to, you know, to, to be thought about for a moment because, you know, i was reading yesterday about a family who at home there they both have elder care. this lady also has a son with, with who is in remission from cancer. and so there's still a fear out there as we see variance circling around in from cove it in the united states. and this whole question about the fragility of health or fragility of life

. i just want to tell our audience that's also a legitimate part of this question. is it not melissa? yeah, absolutely, absolutely. and i think probably one of the most positive things to come out of cove. it is a different way of thinking about kind of what health and safety on the job. right . you know, it's not just, i'm not going to fall off a ladder and break my neck. right. there is a much broader definition and it extends to things like exposure to disease. it extends to things like per amount, you know, we've seen some really interesting data recently from the world health organization about burned out literally killing people. very, very timely after you know what a lot of people's work life balance looked like during. and i think we're going to think about those themes more expansively and in more depth. and you know, what does it mean to be a frontline or constantly exposed to, you know, sort of negative emotional impacts or things like that. jeremy,

when you kind of look at this question of people where they are and meeting them where they are, as we think about the new american economy. i guess another dimension, i mean, you know, i'm trying to kind of get my head around. what does the modern worker social contract look like? you know, is it going back down in my case, in washington dc on k street where we have lots of new buildings and i don't think they're going to be that full for a while. you know, how do we kind of bring together something that's fair to all sides and also nimble . and i guess part of the question i have for you when you think about the new american economy. we also had a lot of gig workers. we had workers that were not going back for full time work and they were, you know, and we all, we all said, i'll just mention this passing study called the venture forward study, which go daddy and the university of iowa. you see a lay anderson, school of business in arizona state. did that look, there's been an explosion of micro businesses online at people kind of doing their own thing. and i kind of applauded that i sort of think it, wow, that's a sign of health and breaking away from the traditional, you know,

long term service at one company. do you have any insights into how that evolution is going and what sped up and what you're worried about it that yeah, it's a great question and i think what disruption is messy. but ultimately, if you look at the history of american economy, it's been very good, right? moments where you had to have something new happen. i mean, i'm one of these we're studying now is we're looking at the last session to try and understand who, what were the cities that spared well, and what were the cities that struggle than what, what made them shut them apart. and one of the things we're seeing because we look at immigration, is at the cities that were more welcoming towards immigrants were actually the hardest in the last session after 2008. because they had more of those people that were bring in new ideas, new businesses on the front lines, and those are the most vulnerable, but also the most responsible for growth. and so when they just like in this pandemic, when the people who are losing their job for the restaurant workers and, and the small entrepreneurs and people who didn't have the capital, the stay going. that's what happened there. but then when you look to the recovery

cities, there are, were the fastest. and ultimately we were doing the best were the ones that were investing and bring in new people and new ideas and people from that. and they were more dynamic. they were more responsive because they had people with different networks, different capabilities, different interests. they were starting new businesses. i live in new york. and if you look at new york, what happened and there are close businesses all throughout 2008, just as there are now. but the neighborhoods that responded the pastors were bay ridge and brooklyn, in jackson heights in queens, where you'd have barges immigrants. but the people wanted coming in starting new mom and pop shops, new main street businesses. and so i think that's one recipes that we have to say. look, there are gonna be people who are going to be displaced. and we need to invest really heavily in that it can't just be about what the job to tomorrow, which would also be invest in creating johnson skills we have today. but we can't lose sight of the fact that it is going to be a new economy. and we do want to experiment, and we do want to invest in entrepreneurs. and we do want to invest in, in trying to, to upscale people and make sure that they have jobs that work for them. melissa, you are nodding. you, you want to comment?

yeah, absolutely. i, everything you're saying really resonates. i mean, i think of this is if you look at graph the, who was in what sector the economy around 1900100, right. you see the agrarian brown coming down pretty dramatically and services and manufacturing coming up, you know, pretty dramatically. and they're kind of crossing at one point, i think we're at another point like that, to be honest, where, you know, again, it's speed it up. but there are just a lot of transition between sectors of the economy and to the point that was just made. the whole economy isn't, it's not all sort of industrial right? there are all parts of the economy. and during those transition moments, those parts can be really vibrant. and we shouldn't discount the impact or, you know, to not look at how we care for that part of the economy, right? we have about a minute left. so really quickly, i'm gonna get some free consulting advice from both of your current phase. so don't charge, don't send me a bill. but real quick, the federal reserve of san francisco is said that one in 7 americans that $300.00

a week, extra unemployment insurance that they get would not stop them from going to get a job. so the small portion for which them, as, according to the survey, $26.00 republican governors have squeezed off those benefits. another set of governors are keeping them place until september. do you think that those checks make a difference right now in the calculus? is the work or not going back because that worker is just, i'm having a good time getting unemployment checked. just real quick, melissa and jeremy. i'll give jeremy the last word. yeah, i don't. i don't think those checks are making a major difference. i think again there are a lot of other needs that work fills for people and so people are not coming back if there's not the right work, not because that $300.00 on the margins makes a difference. and i think it's important to keep that in place to support the folks that really are still teetering about jeremy. i'm to give you real fast, quick word. last word. yeah, i don't have the expertise to disagree or agree, but i will say unfortunately, we're going to get a real experiment where you're going to see, and it's going to that the cost of

a lot of pain for people. you're going to see how people are faring, but i certainly think at this moment we need to invest in workers and we need to invest and making sure that people are able to stay in love. this conversation really appreciate melissa swift workforce transformation, consulting at corn ferry, and jeremy robins, executive director of new american economy. thanks so much for being with us today . thanks for calling me. so what's the bottom line? the biggest lesson that we've all learned from the pandemic is that life is really short and it can be fragile. is it any wonder that folks are rethinking their lives and their options nowadays? well, i don't think so. this was happen even before the pandemic and was one of the major drivers of immigration, both legal and illegal end of the united states. folks at the border were trying to get into america. well, they want those jobs and a lot of the folks already here. well, they don't want those jobs, so for workers and low paying jobs like retail and fast food, or even in some higher paying jobs like teachers and office workers. many people just burn out during the pandemic and now they're looking for something different.

so don't be surprised if soon you drop by a department store or a fast food window. and a robot says, here's your order. the algorithms are coming, and that's the bottom line. ah, across the world, young activists and organizers around them are motivated and politically engaged. we were the one who had life on what was going on. and the way the more means to me did the generation change is al jazeera, as me series, looking at the fresh ideas for the transformation of global politics. the day we do the work of making sure that our voice groups are heard coming soon on, al jazeera, a city defined by military occupation, there's never been an arab state. he with the capital of jerusalem. everyone is

welcome. but the default structure that maintains the call on a project, that's what it feels, was one of the founders of a settlement with this and the story of jerusalem through the eyes of its own people, segregation, occupations, discrimination, injustice. this is i thought, side in the front of the century, drew for them a rock and a hard place analogy 0 ah ah, this is out there. i'm getting obligated with a check on your world headlines. a fire burning beneath the collapse building in surfside, florida, as hampering efforts of finding survivors. 5 bodies have been recovered so far. 156 people remain unaccounted for. what john hendrick reports from sir side. florida. there is a reconciliation center, but very few people have been reconciled. most of the people who are waiting in

that center are waiting to hear news about those one.