Hello, everyone. Welcome. I am Rita Myerson, Principal Researcher in the Human Capital Center here at the Conference Board. And we're thrilled to have you join us today for the Conference Board's 1st 2025 webcast. We are going to be focused on reshaping the workforce under the new administration, and I am joined by two experts that I'm thrilled to introduce to you today, Alan Schwyer, a principal researcher in our Human Capital Center, an expert in federal government and DEI. And next to me here in the studio is Mitchell Barnes, a labor economist who's going to give us some great insight into the proposed policy changes of the new administration. Before we jump in, we want you engaged in this conversation. It's really important that you are equipped with what's happening and you are able to walk away from this conversation today that we're having and you're able to have your own conversation starter in your workplace. So let's start with a poll. We would love to know. Do you anticipate the new administration's policy agenda will cause disruption to your workforce? And we've given you 3 choices here, so please go ahead and vote. Not at all. Slightly, moderately, and very much. We'd love to see what you're thinking before we jump into our content today. Great. We are seeing some engagement. We would love to see more of you engaged. And we hit OK, we're at 50% and we're going to take a look at what you had to say and we'll see how that mirrors out what we're going to talk about today. So thank you so much. So if we take a look at the results, interesting. And absolutely, Alan and Mitch will certainly jump in. All right. Our majority here isn't moderately at 37.5%, slightly at 29.5 S between. So we do see some anticipation of disruption and about 1/3 are saying not at all very much. What are you thinking, Mitchell? You know, I think some of this really falls in line with, you know, the expectation of uncertainty. You know, I think there's a lot of things and items that are floated around, whether that was, you know, coming out of the last couple months of the campaign or some of the actions that we've seen kind of leading up to Inauguration Day. There's still enough uncertainty in each of the facets we're going to talk about. And I think, you know, people are wary of what some of these changes might mean, but there's still some ways to go to see really what comes. That's a really good point. So we're kind of in anticipation up to the 20th of January. And Alan, Thoughts. Yeah, I agree. I think, I think most we don't really know, no one knows what the new administration's priorities might be. But as Mitchell said, there's been enough talk to to, you know, really reflect that 80% of our respondents here feel that there will be at least some impact, some disruption to the workforce. I think that's interesting and probably very accurate. Yep. All right. So before we dive into our conversation, we did want to alert you to three pieces of research that we have published at the Conference Board, and you can find those in the additional resources area, which is where you may be downloading today's presentation. We'll also put the links to this in the chat so you can take a look at this. And this is kind of what we're going to cover today. So we wanted to make sure that you have that and just as an overview of what we're going to specifically be talking about, we're going to look at the new policy agenda and how that might impact immigration practices and the workforce. Mitchell's going to take us through that. He's also going to talk to us through how, you know, potential changes to tariffs might impact the labor force, as well as the proposed tax policies and the impact on the labor market and corporate compensation practices. And then we're going to take a look at deregulation, how that might exacerbate our current skill and talent shortages. Alan's going to take us through that. He's also going to explore the proposed Department of Government efficiency DOGE and we have some research on that, that you will have the opportunity to read as well and how that might impact the private and non non for profit sectors. And lastly, the discouragement of the DEI in the workplace. Alan is an expert in this, has been speaking about this with members as well as on the press. So we are looking forward to that as well. So with that, I'm going to hand this over to Mitchell, who's going to talk about the immigration potential changes. Well, thank you, Rita. And you know, I think if there is is 1 theme to really go on for some of this conversation, it's it's uncertainty. So I think what we're trying to do is at least put out, you know, a conceptual menu of, of at least things that we are tracking certainly that can be helpful for your organizations to start thinking through already. And I think this is a conceptual breakout for me of really what we're talking about when we think of immigration policy in the US. And I split this into enforcement of what we really think about and reforms and really the structure of those programs themselves. What's also important to note really off the top here is that enforcement is very much under White House authority. Obviously funding and some of the contingencies that might have to go along with that, Congress might need to step in and and give their support. But a lot of the things that we're talking about on the enforcement front very much in the ballpark of things the White House can do reforms. I think is is still a Gray area a little bit. And I know Alan has, you know, some some thoughts as we get into the next couple slides, but there is kind of this idea around a merit based system, a best and brightest. I think there is an acknowledgement today that the US immigration system is not working effectively for most participants in it, whether that is businesses getting, you know, the folks they need, whether those are immigrants themselves. And I think it's worth noting that, you know, at least on the top line, something that they have really circled in on that. I think a lot of you know the business perspective is circled in on it's about 1/3 less depending on really some of the humanitarian entries. 1/3 of our legal channels are dedicated to employment and some of the skill based targeted immigration. Most of this is really concentrated in family. A lot of that, you know, comes in, you know, with some of the humanitarian, whether that is parole, whether that is asylum, a lot of that really does fall again under the administration. Before we really turn to some of the the changes I do want to highlight what I think of is, is really the the most consequential uncertainty for the economy at large, certainly the labor force, and that is deportations. That is really what does this enforcement look like? What is the scope of who really they might go after? They have said there is a, you know, at least an initial target of criminals, those who, you know, pose some kind of public risk. But if you are here without authorization, you've broken some law by definition. So certainly I think that is is really the biggest question mark. OK, Alan, any? Thinking as Mitchell was, was going through this, that on the reform side too, you know, for American organizations to be globally competitive, it is important, I agree, to reform immigration along the lines of of competing for the world's best and brightest and to focus on a merit based system. One thing that might be overlooked though, if you do that and in addition significant significantly curb family immigration in particular, which is the vast bulk of legal immigration, I mean 70% pretty much of legal immigration to the country, then you might be sacrificing future labor market growth due to, you know, higher fertility rates amongst recent immigrants, immigrants and so on. And you also might prevent people who are already here from having the support of their family members, allowing them to enter or remain in the workforce. So there are maybe unintended consequences of of severely curtailing family immigration, even if many of those family members don't possess the most in demand skills. The country's thinking. I know Mitchell's going to show us a very important chart on this in a few slides, but I just wanted to, you know, make that point. And you know, I want to highlight one other thing here, you know, in addition to that is really who are we talking about? You know, and I think that is something that, you know, we have done some work on in in the ESF center at the Conference Board. And if you look, you know, across kind of consensus estimates pre pandemic, there were roughly 11 to 12 million, you know, individuals in this country without any authorization, whether they came over without that authorization, whether they overstayed a visa or some some similar situation over the last several years. And, you know, following the pandemic, we've seen about 6,000,000 entries. But I think what's worth noting, and I think this is, you know, worth highlighting across the board is that these are legal entries because many of these programs are stipulated by how these people are given their status. And again, because enforcement really does reside with the White House, the ability to revoke that status, whether you think of DACA is not necessarily something that that the White House can go after directly certainly something that they want to go after. TPS and parole are really your two main programs, as well as asylum that we've seen the Biden administration leverage over the last several years to deal with the border. So many of those have status, but what happens if their status is revoked? Certainly we see that population butting up to potentially 18 million people. That could be a little bit fearful right now that they are in scope of this. And one more point before we move on is just that these people are predominantly working age involved in the labor force. Whether you were talking about, you know, low cost labor, some things that we don't think about, construction, service delivery, food delivery, but also you know, really across the board as we'll discuss really touching a lot of these sectors. I'm looking forward to getting into the details on that and I think it's going to be really helpful for our audience and we encourage you to use the chat if you have questions because we're going to be answering questions throughout. Let's take a look at the potential program actions and what we might see in the workforce. Yeah. And I'll, I'll go ahead and start. Is that, you know, it's really around a couple, you know, core of these these programs. And I think this really does highlight some of the uncertainty, particularly facing businesses that interact with these is that we would expect if there's going to be heightened scrutiny again, around visa programs. Very similar, I think, to some of the challenges that some of the participants saw, you know, 4 to 8 years ago. But I think there is also, I think, you know, more of an openness, whether that is, you know, potentially tied in with some of the tech mindset around this incoming administration. But really an openness towards looking at some of these H1B, towards looking at some of the international student pathways that we know is a struggle to keep those folks in after they've graduated. Can we keep those and really massage those pathways? And I would say that, you know, while there's uncertainty to really the direction this would go, the one thing that I would highlight here is that Democrats, I think really will, you know, find themselves a little bit tempted to come to the table because there is some bipartisan elements I think that could be achieved here. That's a really important point here, especially when we're looking at our Congress coming to fruition. All right, let's take a look at what's happening across sectors. And I think this is, you know, really the the pain points and when you're really looking about the the economic effects of immigration, it is not just, you know, what's portion of the workforce to these folks constitute. So just as a, for instance, foreign born individuals make up about 25% of the US workforce. That's. A really important point and I think that we should highlight that. So 25% of our workforce is foreign born, OK. And what you see is, is really estimates around the undocumented or unauthorized number, they range. And there's really no true official source that that we're really confident in. But we do see these folks kind of picked up in some measures. So this is one of those where we can split kind of those foreign born into naturalized citizens, those have kind of gone through that process and attain citizenship. And those that are non citizens, those that you know are undocumented, some estimates of that kind of portion of folks and illegal immigrants. And I think what this really, really highlights is the criticality of these workforces in really specific areas where that is, you know, cleaning and maintenance, agriculture, construction. You also see kind of a higher disproportionate representation in some of the higher technical fields as well. Really when you think about kind of the the cross nature of some of the skills that we are acquiring. So I think really when you we, when you split this apart, it really is where do we need some of of these workers? Where are they sitting today? And the last point I would add here is that when we really look towards the future, where might the US workforce come up short of demand here in the next 10 years? It is a lot of these that are predominantly foreign war workers. It's really important and we think on the heels of the devastating fires in an unprecedented fires in California, that's probably an area where we're going to see need help. All right, why? Go ahead. You know, it's also important to point out the blue here, you know, Mitchell was talking about the, you know, possibility of deporting large numbers of undocumented immigrants and especially in building construction and farming, you know, areas where we're approaching 1/3 are, you know, undocumented workers. This could have a big impact on not only those sectors, of course, but a ripple effect on other sectors if these deportations were to to, you know, really come to fruition in the numbers that we've heard. So it's not just, you know, foreign born, but also important to look at where the most, you know, vulnerable immigrants you know, are reside. And I think that's a great introduction to our next slide as to why this is important when we take a look at the US working population through 2050. And, and there's little doubt that immigration is is a challenging political issue, not just in this country, but I think and more broadly, what I think is really critical to understand not just of the US, but most Western countries at this point is that demographic change is really rearing its head. We are really approaching a point where natural population growth without immigration is really approaching a critical inflection point. And this is just representative of that. This is the US Census Bureau's own projections from last year. And this essentially says, if I give you a couple of different variations of immigration, you know, over this horizon, at what point, you know, does the US population start to maybe tip over and start to shrink? And I think this really does tell you what the long term implications of these decisions are. Doesn't mean that they're necessarily easy to make, but the labor shortage aspect, demographics, immigration, all of this is part of the same puzzle. And Alan, when we think about the continued focus of CE OS of the C-Suite CEOSCHROS on the focus on talent of attraction retention, this is such an important point. It is absolutely, I think one of the most important charts that we'll show. I think everyone or most people agree that we have an immigration problem. We need to be more effective at the border where illegal immigration is concerned, but we also need immigrants. This is a country of immigrants. Our birth rate is at a point now in the in the country that all growth is dependent on immigration. This is chart depicts and of course then all workforce growth and and even stability is dependent on immigration. So important slide I think 1. The only last point I'd like to make on immigration is something Mitchell, you've said many times, which is even if you start to deport small numbers, it could have the effect of causing undocumented workers not to go to work, whether in the restaurant industry, farms, in the construction, in the construction industry, stay home because they're afraid of being rounded up and deported. Again, I'm not saying that we don't we shouldn't enforce immigration laws. It's just when you just specifically look at the workforce, there are repercussions that sometimes are front of mind that we we also have to consider and think about. Absolutely. Thank you for that. So let's take a look at what's happening with the potential changes in tariffs. So this is another hot topic and we encourage you to ask questions in the chat. We we addressing them throughout this webcast. And let's turn it over to Mitchell to kind of give us an overview of what's happening and then we'll have like a little bit of a discussion. So we know how tariffs are the incoming president's favorite word apparently. And you know, I think this also is subject to a lot of uncertainty at this point, unfortunately. There's obviously been, you know, kind of the mention of maybe 60% of all Chinese imports, 10% across the board. Just this week he had said, or there was reports rather, that had said 10% universal on targeted goods, meaning doesn't matter the country, we're going to pick a few goods and kind of form that trade protection. That is really what they're aiming. Whether or not that comes to fruition and really what the final structure of this really comes out to be, I think is again still a question mark. I think what is really in our mind though is what do do the implications of this look like both in a retaliatory geopolitical way, but also from just kind of the uncertainty and the potential fallouts of kind of the economic impact. And first and foremost, I think really we are just coming off still maybe still fresh in our memory of supplies chain fragilities. This is still kind of a period where we still see kind of shifting and reshoring of manufacturing. A lot of these supply chains have kind of reconnected. But what does this really look like when trade tensions start to flare up again? Does this raise kind of the prospect of, you know, potential risk of, you know, retaliatory tariffs, somebody forbidding or banning the critical, you know, export of minerals, for instance, something that would really harm and get right to the heart of US National Security? So this is not only I think is we'll show on the next slide and economic kind of driver of really looking at this in a serious manner, but it's also I think worth taking a note of what they're attempting to do with this. Something that, you know, they are really focused on, whether it's defense, energy, technology, you know, those are really the target industries, if you will. But they are really trying to revolve this around what I think, you know, is, is at least worth mentioning in this conversation is that, you know, the exiting administration also did keep up some of the tariffs that were implemented from 2016 to 2020. But what they also did is really invest whether that was the CHIPS Act IRA, it wasn't just kind of the infrastructure and you know, hard money for those projects. Some of the biggest investments, you know, not monetary wise, but I think just crucially was trying to establish workforce hubs, trying to get some workforce elements throughout these programs. Because I think when I look at this from a labor economist perspective, it very much is a story of some of these projects have already hit snags with labor shortages, whether construction workers, advanced technicians for some of these factories. So certainly I think that, you know, skills and investment needs to be part of the story, not just really what we're looking to do kind of from a trade perspective. And you also see the interweb of the immigration component as I'm hearing what you said and just if you could hit on supply chain for a minute and the supply chain fragilities you talked about all this, but that in particular kind of becomes reminiscent of what happens during COVID. Yeah. You know, I think there is a necessary kind of review at least you know nationally and strategically of do we have you know what we need and and able to manufacture and produce all the things we need for defense, for healthcare, for any emergency, you know that that might take place. I think that also, you know, we have certainly seen extended out to AI, you know being the first perhaps to quantum. Some of these really, you know, Next Frontier Technologies, I think are very much, you know, in that same line of thought at this point. And I know you have a really interesting, you know, chart for us to take a look at and Alan would love for you to weigh in on this as well. If you could explain kind of what we see here and what we're looking at and like how this might impact the labor market, that would be. Great. A little complicated, but we're looking at five kind of different shocks and you will see those kind of all listed at the bottom here. So this is a shock of that 60% tariff against China, 10% Mexico and and down that list. These are all individual. So if I'm looking at that left sidebar in blue, if the US were to apply that 60% tariff to China, US real GDP would fall by 1% year over year. You would see about a 1% increase in PC inflation, US unemployment would tick up and the rest of the world economy would also do worse. And so this is individual 5 scenarios. This is not all cumulative if we were to do all of this at once and it doesn't take account into what the effects of retaliation so. Somewhat alignment. It could be. Alan and thoughts on the phone. Yeah, just on this in the in the previous slide, I think it's also important to, you know, acknowledge that the globalism and global free trade pendulum may have spun too far, at least for the liking of many Americans who, who for whom it was an issue in this election and previous elections. And and if the pendulum could be, could swing back to the right degree, it could also create employment in certain areas. And, and so it's not just all the, you know, negative effect on the economy. If if this were done, you know, let's say brilliantly and we didn't have, didn't cause a global trade war, there could also be good, good impact on the economy and and especially for certain, you know, for some workers. All right, so the so some positives. All right, let's move to the last topic of our the first part of this section, the new tax policies and how they may influence the labor market and corporate compensation practices. And and we've worked together on the salary, the three of us on salary increase budget for 2025 that we worked on over the summer. So it's good to kind of let's revisit and see what's happening both from a corporate perspective and overall. And I think, you know, when we, you know, all come back from the holiday officially and start reading some of the political news early in the year. I think the first fight that we are going to see is about the budget is going to be at least kind of prospectively about the expiring of Trump's initial tax cut. The Tax Cuts and JOBS Act from 2017. Many of those provisions are set to expire at the end of the year. Some of them are already in kind of a process of phase out. You know, whether you're talking about the corporate tax. The US at that point had the highest in the OECD at 35%, is now at 21, is included in that bill Pass through deduction for small business owners, individual rates, SALT for state and local deduction is going to be a topic this year. But I think my expectation and I think at least the broad expectation is that that is existing law. If I'm, you know, a sitting congressperson, you know, I am not going home to my disk district and saying that I think people's taxes should go up. So I think the broad expectation is that most of that stays intact and sees some type of renewal, whether earlier this year. I know that they're trying to kind of find some ability to do that in one, you know, swift blow or perhaps maybe later in the year. I think there are also kind of a number of things that are, you know, again, a little bit more frivolous that have been mentioned. But I think it's worth at least addressing kind of what what these might look like. One of those is, you know, further reduction of the corporate tax or you know, kind of some amendments there. Certainly we would see the prospect of boosting business investment. We've seen at least for the last several months, you know, sentiment start to improve, you know, from the labor side, we would love to see, you know, hiring a little bit more strengthened in the next year. But certainly I think it's it's really critical to understand that we see the US economy as very healthy right now, you know, certainly slowing from what we saw over the last year or two, but ultimately the fiscal cost of another, you know, significant tax reduction, you know, potentially reheats the economy to a point that is inopportune for the time being. There are also a couple of preferential, you know, taxes that he has circled. And I think from a broad perspective, any preferential tax treatment, people adjust their behavior. It's not, you know, a great, you know, fiscal cost benefit to the government, but certainly is interesting as far as the compensation structure goes. And that is, you know, should we, you know, perhaps look at elimination of tax on overtime and tips. You know, I think there's definitely, you know, at least the possibility that might drive some behavioral change. You know, do I want to shift my workers? If I'm a worker, maybe I want to shift myself, you know, into something like that. Elimination of tax on Social Security benefits is another one. Again, obviously a a large contingency of the voting public there. But that is also going to be somewhere on the table this year of what do we do around entitlements, not only Social Security, but all of really the elements in that. I know Alan will will mention a little bit more of that in a second, but the one thing I'm going to end on Rita is this, it's not just, you know, again reflecting on immigration and population, where are we going? It really is, you know, are we on a fiscal, fiscal sustainable, you know, path as well. And if you look, you know it really the 10 year horizon or so that we have on Social Security and Medicare today. You know, all of those things really are are becoming part of the same story of are we making the right investments for the trajectory we want to be on. OK. And that's getting me actually very excited to work with both of you on the salary increase budget and what we're going to see if we're going to actually see an increase or decrease remain the same in 2026. But Alan, if we look to just today and the points that Mitchell raised about the tax potential consequences or impacts rather what what, what strikes most to you? Well, just so you know, just what Mitchell said, anything. One of the things Mitchell pointed out was this. This is all very uncertain, very uncertain as to whether we'll see at least the the taxes in blue change here. The other theme I might point out is the contradictions. I think our audience would have picked up on those already. And I'm going to go through more the at least on the face of it, some of the agenda appears to oppose other parts of the of the agenda. Elimination of tax on overtime and tips, elimination of tax on Social Security benefits. These are big items, a big tax impact on government revenue. And at the same time the administration wants to bring down the deficit and address the mounting debt. So I agree, I think these are unlikely, but as with everything else, were presented today worthy of contemplation by business leaders to at least be prepared should these and some of the other things we're talking about become reality. Do you think any of these proposed changes and any of the momentum that we might see around this in the in Q1, do you think this might impact compensation planning for 2025 S what's already kind of if you're on the fiscal year and you might, you know, and what's planned for merit or cost of living increases? So what we what we? Well, you know, I think I think the one thing worth noting is that, you know, even with all of this uncertainty, I think we would generally put all of this in the same basket as potentially inflationary. And you know, something that the Fed has certainly been attentive to in the last several months is that as we are now anticipating this administration, do they need to back off and maybe keep rates, you know, kind of in place here for a little bit longer? You know, so I think there is at least kind of this thought of maybe uncertain, but directionally do we know what to expect? OK. Alan, thoughts on that on just that point, not. Really, I mean just, you know, again, elimination of tax and overtime tips, we're talking about an industry that's already running a very thin margins. Lots of restaurants, for example, are closing, People are staying at home more often, eating out less. Would an employer then reduce hourly wages if this were to occur, having net zero effect on the income of restaurant workers? You, you just can't think, you know, the, the, the consequences, unintended consequences of these measures are impossible to predict. So I don't know. I mean, I don't know whether these taxes, what we're talking about here would have broader impact on, on whether there's a 3% raise across the board. I mean, on average next year versus a 4%. But you know, Mitchell's right, these are all inflationary things that we're talking about. They also contradict the incoming administration's pledges to reduce inflation, to bring down the cost of borrowing. So we'll see. I think that's an important conversation for our members. All right, So why don't we? We'd love to engage everyone in another chat in, excuse me, another poll and I'm going to bring that up. So please engage and let us know what you think. How is your company planning to address the potential workforce implications of the new administration? And we have a few options for you here. Create they've already created a dedicated task force to address potential workforce implications or maybe each functional area is managing these potential changes independently. They might be scenario planning, so finance, HRIT, risk, etcetera. No action has been taken and you're not really you're not sure. So we'd love to hear what you have to say about this because of course we're talking here about potential and it's all in theory, but we want to hear what's actually happening in in your organization's. And we're going to wait till we hit about 50% of you and we're almost there. So thank you all for participating in this and it really gives us a nice opportunity to hear what's happening in the workplace. So we're going to give it another second or any, any. And as we're waiting here, we're almost at 50%. I'm very curious what Mitchell now and what you both think is going to let's ah, interesting. OK, interesting on our results here. So all right, about 1/3 of you are saying unsure of what's happening with that's interesting and that almost half either each functional areas doing something or an enterprise wide work task force is at play and just about 15% no action taken. All right. Thoughts on this, Alan? I'll go to you first. Yeah, this is a little difficult to interpret. I think, you know, if the executive team has created a task force, a lot of people might not know about it. So I understand the the 1/3, they'd be probably more likely to know about it if each functional area was managing the potential changes. And that's the biggest response here. I think this is sort of saying, look, no one's hitting the panic button no matter what industry they're in. We don't know what's going going to occur. But organizations are starting to have conversations about this, starting to think about what they might do if if one policy or another were put into place. And I think that's really good and healthy. No action has been taken as only 15.4%. So that's a good number to look at too. It's these numbers tell me that probably most organizations are are looking at this relatively seriously and starting to talk about it at least. I agree with your points and you make a good point about if that it is that at the executive level. Not many people would know about that from a large enterprise wide perspective. Any thoughts, Mitchell, from a labor markets perspective? You know, just that just that I think there's still a little bit of wait and see. And, and because there's such a range of things, you know, I think many are probably trying to get out ahead of this and really trying to anticipate really what might come down the Pike, but really where they're situated and where they need to put their attention. So I think, you know, I think that question is going to be a little bit more interesting to ask maybe a month or two from now. I know. So we'll have to revisit. We'll have to do and we'll it, won't we? We probably should do a post election, excuse me, a post inauguration and see where we are. All right, so we're going to move to the second part of our program and we're going to take a look at deregulation, how that might spike the economy or exacerbate the skills and talent shortages. And Alan, if you'd like to address that, we are excited to hear what you have to say. Thanks, Rita. Yeah, deregulation is something the administration has talked about, too. In fact, they've mentioned the goal of removing 10 regulatory rules for each new rule. And, you know, if this, to whatever degree is put in place, it'll create an environment most likely of accelerating deregulation. That's something that many are predicting in the past. When this is done, it spikes investment. Reduce bureaucracy, it increases the amount of competition, more entrance into different fields because it's easier to to to enter a field. This is not 100% consistent, but on the whole, deregulation tends to increase investment to spike the economy and therefore to create a greater demand for health in whatever industry is affected. For example, president-elect Trump, he's he's nominated new SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins, he has said and is expected to significantly reduce regulatory burdens and rules in most areas of finance. Clearly this. I'm glad you raised that. OK. That's, that's very important. Right. And it's just one example of 1 industry, but this would likely, you know, increase the demand for talent in that sector just because we're talking about, you know, boosting that, that, that industry through deregulation or, or less regulatory rules. It could also focus first on employment practices and deregulation. There's good support, Democrats and Republicans for, you know, legislation that would limit the use of non compete agreements. For example, the FTC struck down sort of a blanket ban on on non competes this year but or last year. But, you know, I think this could be an area where we start to see the administration focus first, you know, unemployment practices. The President will probably not need congressional approval for some of this, so it could be easier to implement than some of the other policy agenda. But like everything else, you have to keep in mind that unwinding rules that are already in place is easier said than done right, So repeating that it takes time and these things won't really happen overnight. You need a notice. Comment, comment process and those types of things before you can you can do much of what the in the deregulation agenda. I don't know. Mitchell, did you have thoughts on on this area? You know, I think the one, you know, thought that I would add in is that, you know, as we again, still kind of reflect on some of the advanced sectors and, and things that are going to be hot topics for the years to come. AI, you know, had seen a lot of progress not from Congress but from this past White House kind of establishing some early forms of what we would call guardrails, at least trying to, you know, directionally push us in the right direction. And certainly some of that was also investment. We see data centers. We see, you know, a lot of these investments that are foundational to those industries as well. But from a regulatory sense, we would expect this on incoming administration to be much more hands off. And, you know, I think in that next few years with some of the, you know, technology advances we might expect, you know, perhaps that is a boon as well. It's very interesting. I'm glad you brought the AI. PS And also we talked about the data center large investment on Monday when we were preparing for this. All right, I'd love to get into the hot topic of the federal government's efficiency department, DOGE being led by entrepreneurs. So none political establishment folks and how this might what's going to happen and the impact for private sector and not-for-profit. So Alan, I know you're going to have a lot of detail on this. So why don't you take us through that? Yeah. First, I think it's important to say, you know, you might be thinking if you're in the audience and you're not in government that this doesn't apply. But the scale of what DOGE is talking about would have cascading repercussions across the economy. You know, they've talked about finding $2 trillion in savings from federal government expenditures. And of course, the federal government, because it spends about $7 trillion a year, is a big, big chunk of the overall GDP. It's spending, you know, certainly affects the private sector because a big chunk of the private sector gets contracts from the government. So chopping 2 trillion from this, which represents a, a big piece of that, you know, GDP about 8% would, would, would have cascading repercussions. The likelihood of 2 trillion, it may be even lower than anything else we've talked about. Clearly everyone would also agree, as we might with with some of immigration reform, that there is waste in government, There's waste in corporate spending too, but there may be greater waste in some cases in government spending. And we need to do what we tend to to curtail that. So the intent of the Doge is something that other administrations, Democrat and Republican attempt attempted in the past and had, you know, measures of success nowhere near 2 trillion in success, but certainly some success. So this is something that I think we we, we, we would all agree is is important. But you know when you and and Mitchell mentioned this earlier, to have as much impact as what those as said they would, would mean cutting into the big expenditures like Medicare and Social Security. These are often third rail type issues that most administrations really don't want to touch because it would impact their ability to be re elected. And then another thing I want to point out is that Doge expects to have found these reductions in time before the midterm elections. This is a very short period of time to find these cuts. And probably congressional Republicans and the president don't want to be seen as trying, trying to be re elected or at least the congressional Republicans in a time or some congressional Republicans in a time where, you know, they are making these deep cuts. So there'll be some cuts. To some extent, there will be layoffs in government. This is where we get into the workforce. There will be some cuts to programs. There will be maybe entire departments that are that are eliminated. We talked about the Department of Education, for example, but we don't know again, where these might occur and we don't know really what the the broader implication of that might be. So if you were to reduce the the US federal workforce, which stands at about 2.1 million employees by several 100,000, whether through layoffs or through voluntary separations bringing people back to work in the office full time. For example, as some observers have said, this could result in 100,000 voluntary resignations relocating jobs out of DC, even though most 80% of federal government jobs are already out of DC. But moving people might result in more voluntary resignations as might be just a general feeling of, you know, not being aligned with the with the administration cause resignations. Couple of 100,000 people leave looking for work in the federal, in the private or nonprofit sectors that would have the opposite effect of what much of what we've been talking about. That could ease labour and talent shortages. So that's a possibility. On the other hand, if the Doge were successful in getting anywhere near $2 trillion in reductions, as we've seen, that could cause some serious repercussions to GDP and therefore the economy and perhaps even decrease the demand for workers across the board because we might enter, you know, period of, of economic decline or accelerate decline. So again, we don't know. But these are things that are worth considering, whether or not you're in government or in the private or nonprofit sectors. So this is this is still, it sounds like a lot of scenario planning from a pure labor market standpoint. What? What's your thoughts on this, Mitchell? Yeah. You know, I think there's, I think within all of these, you know, potential plans, I think you can kind of pick out an Ave. where you would actually find quite a bit of support for it. But I'll, I'll just kind of put, you know, this addendum on there. There has actually been a recognition in the last year, 2 years among the federal governments. They've had a number of initiatives, particularly around AI and some of these technologies again, but it is almost creating a separate pay structure for federal employees because federal employees cannot compete with comparable private salaries. So one of these thoughts out there is that if we actually wanted to make the government efficient, we would staff them with, you know, private at least level compensated, you know, folks that could equally do that job in the private sector. And so certainly I think there's an opportunity here if they are just looking to cut money, I don't know that that's how you're going to get it. But I think there certainly is a recognition that efficiency I think would go a long way for us all. Thank you so much for bringing the compensation component. That is a very interesting point. All right, so we are going to now shift to our final topic and the hottest topic that we've seen in the press and we continue to talk about is the discouraging of DEI practices in the workplace. And we've seen we've so many examples of this. We would love to get your input on this. So we're going to ask one last poll question and we'd like to know what's happening in your organization's Could the discouragement of DEI programs cause you to reevaluate your DEI initiatives? And we want to hear what you have to say. Definitely, probably unlikely, Unsure. We, we want to hear what you have to say. It's really important for us and important for our conversation here to hear what's happening in the in the workplace, in your organization. So take a minute to answer this last poll. And as soon as we hit our 50% mark, we're almost there. We will take a look at that and then Alan will bring us home on our research and what worker sentiment is about DEI, which is really important and an important part of the conversation as we think about policies and regulatory changes around this. So I'm going to give it one more second. We're almost at 50% and any predictions here? Here we are. OK, interesting. Alan, before I weigh in here as the expert, what are you, what are you thinking on this? Well, I'm, I'm a little surprised that almost half say it is unlikely that the discouragement would cause it to re evaluate. And, and and I'm thinking that that may be because most organizations have already re evaluated their DEI initiative. We're seeing it constantly. We're seeing it in the news all the time in our own research. We're hearing that, you know, 2/3 or more of respondents, we're saying that the climate has caused them to re evaluate the program. So that may be the reason for the high number there. Yeah. So I, I mean, I don't have too much more to say about this except it looks like, you know, a fair #2 are are saying definitely are probably going to re evaluate. The unlikely number seems pretty positive to me, but why don't we take a look at what's happening in our research? So why don't you walk us through what we have found? Sure. Well, one, one of the new administration's most repeated pledges is to eliminate, you know, much of what is labeled the EI in government. And that started in the first term and was reversed a little bit with the Biden administration. So we'll likely see Biden's initiatives reversed again in the government sector, but the incoming administration also aims to discourage DEI activity in the public or the private and nonprofit sectors. However, the important point here is, you know, extensive TCB research and not just our own. This is 2023 and 2024. Similar research from McKenzie, Pew, many others demonstrate that DEI has wide appeal across the workforce. And this is true in survey after survey, year after year. So the next slide, you know, if you, if you think about the this OK, support for DI is obviously going to differ between employees, employee groups and demographics. And it's not surprising that the younger the worker, the more likely they are to want more emphasis on DEI work that you see in this chart. And it's more likely that they're less likely that they're going to say their organizations are doing too much. So it really goes in terms of age group or or cohort, you know, down from baby boomers, who perhaps are less concerned about the EI to millennials. We didn't have enough Generation Z respondents to to include them in this in this chart. Then on the next slide we see even more evidence of this and I'm getting to how this might impact the workforce. No surprise here. I was a little surprised. I think my co-authors were too, just how important the I is to women in general of whatever, whatever race. And this chart's a little hard to follow, but about half of women said they wouldn't work, wouldn't, would not work in an organization that doesn't take DEI seriously. That rises to about 60% for black women. So, you know, again, we're looking at parts of the workforce for whom DEI is more important, more vital, perhaps you could even say essential for not only, you know, for them to thrive at work for, for them to even want to work for a particular organization. So contrasting levels, I mean, some people may have experienced the EI differently. Certainly white and Asian men have less interest and you know, expectation or demand for the EI in the workplace than women and, and, and some women of color, again, to be expected. But the important thing on the next slide when you think about this is if the EI is discouraged. And let's look at women, for example. Women already constitute half the US workforce and much more than half of the college educated workforce. Women, you know, are less satisfied at work already and and I should say significantly less satisfied according to our research in 2024 and 2023 and five years prior to that. We've been doing these satisfaction surveys for that one and according to Pew and other research, So we already have women less satisfied. We have a declining to go to the next slide just because I know we're running short of time. We have a declining labor force participation rate, which simply means that fewer women are in the workforce now than were in say 2000. It's fallen 3 percentage points between 2000 and 2023. If the female participation rate drops by just 1%, that removes 800,000 workers from the workforce. And you can imagine. That could be catastrophic. And that is also, I think it's important to mention that gender equality is an issue not only in the US but highly around the world. So that's a this is a really important one for us to be focused on. Yeah, And, and I want to say, Rita, look, the EI programs deserve scrutiny. They deserve pushback. They deserve reexamination. There had been excesses. I think the pendulum swung a little too far after the George Floyd murder, but the but the pendulum, if it swings too far back, just like we spoke about with with immigration, could have what you what you term catastrophic events. OK. Mitchell, anything you want to add on the DEI component and the impact on the overall popular workforce population and the demographics and just kind of the labor market? Yeah. I mean, I would say that, you know, over the last few years, I think that dialogue and conversation has been, you know, more poignant across most organizations. I think really, again, just taking in context where we are over the last several years, the rehiring boom that we needed to get through to come back from the pandemic. I think that self sorting, you know, really that we've seen certainly, you know, we're in a little bit of a holding pattern right now in the labor market. But I think, you know, you have really given employees at least a taste of what some of that intentionality within an organization looks like. So I do not see that necessarily going away. And if kind of Labor shortages and some of the things we've talked about today really do turn out, you know, the way that we might expect, you know, I think some of those retention, some of those incentives, some of that intentionality is going to be here to stay. Yes. And we know from I'm going to close out here for us. I just on that point in general, I think that it's important that as we're as as human capital practitioners as our audience here that programs around attraction and retention keep this inclusivity and preferences in mind. And that's kind of that's a really big theme and insight coming out of our total rewards research. I think that's important. So in summary, and I'd love for both of you to weigh in here as well, the policy agenda that's described and potentially might happen certainly has a significant impact to the labor and skills shortages and sea churros and the they need to be looking at this. There is potential workforce disruption. We've heard about this scenario planning to our point. It would be really interesting for us to regroup in a special webcast and maybe Q2 or early Q3 to see where we are on this, especially around immigration, deregulation, specific industries that we've talked about, energy, banking, manufacturing, investment, job creation and also what Alan highlighted so well, the reduction, targeted reduction in federal spending of 2 trillion. And and of course on the DEA, we'll see the movement on any closing thoughts in our last two minutes here. Who 1st from either of you? Just to agree that, yeah, it's important for leaders to stay adaptable and flexible because again, we'll repeat it again. We don't know what's going to happen. There's a lot of uncertainty. Just addressing Joseph made a comment about the government and, and the compensation. I, I agree. It's not just, you know, Joseph mentioned that the federal culture is antithetical to high performance and embraces low performance. I, I think actually the federal employee viewpoint survey, which is done every year of government with over half a million respondents from the workers themselves, agrees wholeheartedly with that statement that, that the performance system in government is, is, is damaged. So yes, I, I just wanted to make sure we address that. But other than that, no, I think I'm staying adaptable and flexible Is is the critical, you know, take away. Thank you for addressing Joseph's point and Mitchell. Any closing thoughts? You know, certainly reiterate the flexibility that's going to be needed, you know, over the next months and, and likely years. But you know, I think really, I see the economy as, as you know, really going into next year on solid footing. The labor market certainly is supportive of that right now. And I think a lot of the things we've talked about, I think they're, you know, despite a lot of the tensions around some of these things and, and the hot topics, I think there's a lot of common ground. So I think that is at least a point of optimism for the year. Great. Thank you all so much for joining us today. We were, we're thrilled to have you and we hope to meet with you again soon to continue to explore this topic. But thank you for now. And you can listen to the recording of this and get all of our materials through the Conference Board website. Thank you so much. _1736633234975