All right. Thank you, jim. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] one of the great challenges we face as governors istrying to is trying to anticipate the actions and consequences that our actions will have down the road on future generations. This next panel will give us some insights on what the future might look like. Theyre going to start by looking backward over the past 25 years to let us to get a capsulesized look at how the countrys changed. And most of you, if you have if you havent gone back and told me in 1992 what we have now, i wouldnt have believed it. The explosion of internet, unbelievable changes in telecommunications, social changes, how we do everything. Its just a different world than what we had 25 years ago. If you believe any of these compounding acceleration laws, the next 25 years, the rate of change will be even more rapid. Hopefully, that rate of change will be for the better. Our panel will offer a glimpse of what that future holds, promise of what is possible, and some of the challenges that the future holds for us. Its a chance for us to think about the actions we can take now for that future. Joining us today, kristen tim hodgins, director of research at gallup, richard frye, Pew Research Center, and ryan hawkins, director of state affairs and Public Policy. Whoever is calling me on my cell phone, i am not going to answer. State affairs and Public Policy at microsoft. And, gentlemen, we look forward to your remarks and good, robust conversation about the changing face of the west. Good afternoon. Thanks for the opportunity to share some things that we have learned around the office. Around the office at gallup. Im going to share five or seven minutes here about some of the things that weve learned when it comes to k12 education, College Education and the workplace, and some of the transitions that fall within that. I think the first thing that i would share is, over the last 10 years, weve had time, attention and good advances in the areas of assessment and curriculum and its on the radar , screen. Weve made good advances there, but the countrys attention as it relates to k12 education seems to be changing and , changing things we call the whole child or socialemotional learning. Theres more to the experience than how we did on the test. I am glad to hear about these graded test as a father of four. It makes college more affordable, but were studying student engagement, the belief that you are involved with and enthusiastic about your school day experience. That involves safety having a , teacher that cares about you. And so on. Last month, in the month of october, we surveyed about 800,000 students to see how in the fifth through 12th grades across the country engaged they were and to study their hopes and entrepreneurial aspirations and career and financial literacy. 50 of the nations students are engaged at school. I dont know if that is good or bad. I wish it were 100 , but 50 . Some are not engaged, and some are actively disengaged. As a researcher, when i see a number like 50 , i want to know how we got there. Here is a picture. The nations fifth graders or Elementary School students are engaged three out of four, so about 74 . Theres a precipitous decline each year six, seven, eight, nine, to 10th grade, where only about one third of our students are engaged, and it flat lines there. Once they get to high school. Three quarters of our students are engaged in Elementary School, but only one third engaged when they get to high school. Thats a system issue we need to be aware of and need to address. What is working at the Elementary School level in terms of parent involvement, parent engagement, and so on. So its a system challenge. We know there are several important components. One is great leadership. I work with School Districts across the country and have an opportunity to meet with Successful Schools that have been through a great turn around and have a great story to tell. I never see a Successful School where people apologize for the principal. Theres always a strong leader when there is Great Success at the school. One of the most important things that a School Leader does is select the right teachers on their staff. Some people are predisposed to be great at different jobs, and some have a talent to teach. The belief that every student can learn, and they get a kick out of that. So we have to identify those teachers and mitigate the Teacher Shortage that many states are dealing with. Then, we have to create a Great Workplace for them to learn, so they can give it away to the students that they serve. When students are engaged, they are more likely to achieve. How we feel today will drive how we feel in the future. So we have to deal with these issues around student engagement. When students achieve, we know theyre more prepared to be college and career ready. We need to prepare students for both. When we think about the next level, there are three things that stand out. First, key experiences. We partnered with purdue university. Governor Mitch Daniels was a catalyst about this work early on. Brandon busty and others at gallup to study the key experiences. We surveyed College Alumni and asked them what they did while at college. Theres really no difference about whether a College Graduate will be engaged or thriving in their life if they went to a public or private college, but what matters is how they go to college. Those key experiences. A lot of it comes down to having an adult on the campus that cared about them, was a mentor, plugged them into a career path, and so on, and key experiences in deep learning, a curriculum that builds one semester to the next. Internships and onthejob training has been mentioned. It is the thing most often mentioned when we asked employers what they are looking for. They want to know have you had a , job before . Can you communicate more than 140 characters. Last, managing student loan debt. The numbers have increased past 1. 1 trillion. Its 1. 4 trillion. Student loan debt is the largest, but its greater than all the car loans combined, greater than all the revolving line of credit debt. 1. 4 trillion. Thats a millionmillion. I drove from the airport and there was a sign that said what the Powerball Jackpot is. If you won the jackpot today and said, i want to solve the student debt crisis, the powerball winning would cover the interest until about dinnertime tonight. We have a situation on our hands that is hard to get our heads around. We have to help students make informed decisions. If you have more than 25,000 in outstanding student loan debt, you are half as likely to pursue different decisions, like moving out of your parents home, going back to graduate school, starting a new business, and becoming an entrepeneur, and so on. So we know there is a lot of starting a family is even less likely if you have large amounts of student loan debt. The last thing i will share is this term about changing in the work force. Over the last generation, whether its the advent of the 38 of our work force that is the millennial generation or increasing technology advances, the work force has changed. It has changed from a world where we care less about our paycheck to where we care about our purpose. Its changed from being involved with just our role to what is my opportunities to learn and grow and develop . When we study teacher turnover and why teachers leave the profession, people assume its because of pay and benefits, but teachers leaving the profession are less likely to say that. The most common answer they dont know a path forward. They dont see growth within the role or beyond that role to stay with the school. So we have to address that, not just focusing on our weaknesses. The world gives us enough of that. We need to focus on our strengths. We have helped people identify their talents and harness that for good. Weve transitioned from having a leader or a boss that tells us what it do, to the desire to have a coach that coaches us along in our work, and a transition from the separation of work and the rest of my life to worklife integration. A focus on integrating all of this into my entire life. Maybe those will be some opening remarks to our conversation. I will hand off to my colleagues on the panel and entertain any questions you have at the conclusion. Thank you. Good afternoon. In my brief remarks today, im going to focus on two challenges, and focusing on u. S. Work force, and one will be on the quality of labor and the other will be the quantity of labor. I will discuss the first one first, quantity of labor, and in my view, i would definitely not only say its a challenge, but i would characterize it as a headwind. The second is trends and projections on the quality of labor i have more ambiguous about. I think there are some positive aspects to it. So let me turn first to the quantity of labor. What this shows is my colleagues at Pew Research Center have done projections of the working age population, which we define as ages 25yearsold to 64yearsold. This is not the labor force. Its very, very dicey to project Labor Force Participation rates. We leave that to the bureau of labor statistics. This is the working age population, but this provides the basics of the u. S. Labor force. What you see here is a sand chart, but dont worry about the sand. Just look at the top line, the total working age population. You see a vertical line. Thats 2015. As you look to the left, thats the past 50 years of growth in the u. S. Working age population from 1965 to 2015, and then thats history. Those are actual numbers. To the right, our 20 year projection from 2015 to 2035. What you see Going Forward is, from 2015 to 2035, the working age population will grow by about 10 million persons. 10 million 25yearold to 64yearolds, but the key thing here is very simple. Look to the left. Look at history, and look how steep that growth was. As opposed to that, look to the right in what we project. Were projecting much, much reduced growth Going Forward in the working age population. To put some numbers on it, the slowest decade over the last 50 years, the working age population grew by about. 8 per year, a little less than 1 per year. That was the slowest decade of the last 50 years. The next 20 years, we project that the working age population will only grow about. 3 per year, so one third less. We can discuss this in the question and answer period. Im an economist. Economists, what they think is the way the u. S. Standard of living goes up is two ways productivity, what you get per worker, and how many workers you have in the labor force. So this is a headwind. When the Current Administration wants to set as a goal 3 annual growth thats the number theyre , shooting for, talking about. This is a headwind. It is going to be difficult to make 3 growth on a steady, continuing basis, year after year, when our working age population is only growing. 3 . Now, i dont want to spend a lot of time on the next slide, but we had a lot of immigration to the u. S. In the 1980s and 1990s, but the growth in the working age population in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s wasnt so heavily dependent on the immigrants coming in. We had the baby boom generation and a lot of married women that didnt used to be in the labor force coming into the labor force. So in history, over the last 50 years, immigration has been important, but it wasnt critical. Going forward, that. 3 per year, that is highly contingent on sustained basically, one Million Immigrants coming in per year. What this slide shows, if we reduce our levels of immigration, and this is a hypothetical of zero immigration. Without any immigrants Going Forward in the next 20 years, the working age population will decline, and so theres a lot of pros and cons for immigration. One thing Going Forward, in terms of working age growth in the population, immigration will play a larger role. I want to briefly turn to a Different Research project that weve done and talk about the quality of the labor force, and for times sake, i will advance to the following slide. What we did is we looked at the skill requirements of u. S. Jobs. And just a little bit of background, the u. S. Department of labor in a Data Collection , they, in a detailed fashion, look at the characteristics of well over 900 u. S. Occupations. They survey workers, and they also have job raters that talk to the workers, and, in detailed fashion, describe more than 900 occupations. What we did is we looked at characteristics, very detailed, we looked at about a dozen that we thought captured social skills on the job. This would be interpersonal communication, writing skills, and management skills. That is what we mean by social skills. What we call analytical skills. These were about a dozen different job criteria that captured Critical Thinking and computer usage. And finally, physical skills, manual dexterity, or if you had to repair machines on the job. Every job is rated on the scale. What we did is we looked at jobs that have above average social skills or high to above average analytical skills and high to above average physical skills. Keep in mind theres an overlap. Some jobs need both high social skills and analytical skills. A good example, a ceo will have good social skills and analytical skills, so will a pharmacist, so these are not not mutually exclusive. Cutting to the chase. Lets do the history. What we saw, from 1980 on to 2015, is that total employment in the u. S. Grew by 50 , but jobs that required high or above average social skills almost doubled. They were growing by 83 . Jobs in occupations that required high analytical skills almost doubled, growing 77 . As opposed to that, jobs that required high physical skills only grew by 18 . So what im saying is, the mix of jobs is changing in the u. S. , and its changing towards jobs that require higher skills, particularly in our categorization and high social skills and analytical skills. So skill requirements are going up. Why is it not necessarily a bad thing . I will skip the slide that shows that jobs above average social skills and analytical skills has higher wages. So employment mix is changing, but were creating higher wage jobs as a result. The employment mix is changing, but its toward good jobs, high skilled jobs. What is the challenger . As you all know, that might be the case, but as weve seen, were all wondering how well get our students and our workers, as well as benefiting our employers, helping them to get the skills they will need. In regards to those skills at the research center, we do not try to do occupational projections. Its very difficult, but the u. S. Department of labor, bureau of labor statistics does try. This is based on their most recent 10 year projections of how employment will change from 2014 to 2024. They go for a detailed set of occupations when they say how employment will grow. What we did, we said, ok, we have a taxomomy of which jobs require high social skills and analytical skills and high physical skills. , 1980, thehe past shift has been mixing. According to the bls, if their projections are correct, this trend will continue, and so the basic message here, i will end up here, we face two challenges Going Forward. Unlike the previous 50 years where our standard of living partly was driven forward by a large baby boom, as well as immigration, as well as the participation of married women in the labor force. That stoked the growth and Living Standards weve had over the last 50 years. We have got a headwind, at least Going Forward next 20 years according to our projections, because were not going to get the growth of the working age population that we had previously. Thats a headwind, and its going to make 3 growth and the standard of living very, very difficult. Also, the skill mix is changing. This is a mix towards better paying jobs. We all face the challenge of how well help our workers and our employers find the highly skilled workers. Thank you. [applause] good afternoon. So, im perhaps the last thing standing between this group and happy hour. Is that right . Well have a couple of questions. Perfect. Ok. Always an enviable position to have. As governor hickenlooper alluded to, we live in a time of profound change. At microsoft, we find it helpful sometimes to reflect upon, not simply the changes weve seen in the last 25 years, but the changes in the life of our company. Microsoft was founded in 1975 in albuquerque, new mexico in the midst of a revolution wrought by the microprocessor, and bill gates and paul allen had a very simple vision, and that was to put a p. C. On every desk and in every home. Three decades later, we see a smartphone in every hand and in every pocket. Four decades later, even more profound changes, and our company has changed. Were no longer the Software Start up from albuquerque that moved to seattle. Were now a big, multinational, Cloud Computing company. We have thousands of employees, not just in seattle or silicon valley, but we have a campus in fargo, an Engineering Center outside salt lake city, employees in arizona, nevada, colorado, throughout the west, but were also part of what a lot of people are referring to as the fourth industrial revolution. Its a revolution thats driven principally by Cloud Computing. Cloud computing, meaning the provision of services over the internet using massive data centers that can collect, store, and process huge volumes of information extremely quickly. This trend is changing everything, every industry, every segment of society. Its bringing us autonomous vehicles, changing education, crea