The Future Of Work Podcast With Jacob Morgan | Futurist | Workplace | Careers | Employee Experience & Engagement |

Many parents and leaders are wondering if a college degree is still worth the high educational costs. With student debt reaching nearly $2 trillion and the AI impact changing the future of work, the traditional path to success is facing a major disruption. In this episode, Eric Gertler, Executive Chairman and CEO of US News and World Report, joins us to talk about the "broken compact" in higher education and how college rankings are changing as consumer trust falls. We explore how university leadership must move away from focusing on real estate growth and instead prioritize critical thinking, internships, and lifelong learning. We also cover the growing demand for high-paying trades like electrical work over four-year degrees and a story from Eric's time in government where a hospital leader identified the need for data analysts years before it became a trend. This episode helps CHROs build better talent strategies by showing how to find and train workers based on their actual skill development in a job mark

February 27, 2026: Jack Dorsey cuts 40% of Block's workforce — 4,000 jobs — credits AI, and predicts most companies will follow within a year. We do a deep dive on whether this is genuine AI transformation or a compelling narrative layered on top of a management mistake, and why the answer might be both. Plus: Anthropic draws a hard line against the Pentagon, refusing to allow Claude to be used in autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance — and faces threats of being labeled a national security risk. OpenAI closes the largest private funding round in tech history at $110 billion and an $840 billion post-money valuation. And despite all the doom headlines, computer science graduates are on track to earn $81,500 starting salaries in 2026 — up 7% from last year.   Watch on YouTube. ---------- Start your day with the world's top leaders by joining thousands of others at Great Leadership on Substack. Just enter your email: ⁠⁠https://greatleadership.substack.com/ Quick heads-up: my new book, The 8 Laws o

February 26, 2026: Engineers are facing a productivity panic as coding agents accelerate output — and pressure — at the same time. Nvidia just posted a staggering quarter, underscoring how fast the infrastructure buildout is moving compared to the human transition. Reuters reports nearly one million young people in the UK are now "NEET" (not in employment, education, or training), a flashing warning light for the entry-level pipeline. Burger King is rolling out an AI assistant that listens in, coaches, and scores worker performance in real time. And Rolex's ultra-competitive trade school is producing graduates positioned for $95,000 jobs — a counter-narrative to the idea that all opportunity lives in knowledge work. Watch the full episode on Youtube ---------- Looking for what actually moves the needle on performance and retention? It's in The 8 Laws of Employee Experience. Order here: 8EXlaws.com  

February 25, 2026: This week Anthropic — one of the companies most associated with responsible AI — gutted the safety commitment it made in 2023. The same week the Pentagon gave its CEO a Friday ultimatum: allow military use of your AI or lose a $200 million contract. Meanwhile Jamie Dimon went on record at a JPMorgan investor meeting and confirmed something most CEOs won't say out loud: AI is already displacing his workers, their redeployment infrastructure can't keep up with the pace of it, and society needs to start thinking seriously about what comes next. I also cover why Big Tech is paying up to $1.2 million for communications talent — and what that says about which human skills are becoming most valuable — plus Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank deploying AI to surveil their own traders in real time, and LinkedIn's 2026 Skills on the Rise report, which tracks which skills are actually converting to job offers. 

February 24, 2026: Five major stories broke in the last 24 hours at the intersection of AI and the future of work — and they're all in conversation with each other. Anthropic launched Claude directly inside Excel, PowerPoint, and Slack, making its biggest move yet into everyday knowledge work. A Federal Reserve governor said on the record that if AI drives unemployment, interest rate cuts — the government's go-to economic tool — may not be able to fix it. Goldman Sachs revealed that despite hundreds of billions in AI investment, it may have contributed almost nothing to U.S. economic growth last year. Yale's Budget Lab pushed back on the AI productivity revolution narrative, saying the data simply doesn't support it yet. And a financial research firm's fictional scenario set in 2028 went so viral it triggered a major market selloff. Watch the full episode on YouTube  

Many companies try to solve low morale with simple perks like wellness apps, but workers often care more about real pay and career growth. The big challenge today is keeping frontline employees happy while the world worries about AI impact and high turnover. What could be the most substantial, meaningful investments leaders can make that truly build real loyalty? In this episode, Paul Marchand, EVP and CHRO of Charter Communications, more popularly known as Spectrum, discusses how to invest in people to create a better customer experience. He explains the strategy behind helping a 95,000-person workforce through absorbing rising benefit costs and programs like frictionless, prepaid tuition reimbursement and a unique employee stock purchase plan designed to build an owner mindset. Paul shares how "open mic" sessions at Charter improve their employee retention, and the way Spectrum GPT is being used to make HR more efficient. We also explore the 'high school pathways' initiative, upcoming M&A integration wi

Feb 20, 2026: AI is already deciding who gets hired, promoted, and fired — and there are almost no rules governing how it does any of that. In this episode, I'm building those rules. I call them the Five Laws of AI in the Workplace, constructed in the spirit of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics — rigorous enough to pressure-test, honest enough to admit where they fall short. We cover the Law of Transparency — why 30 million job applicants in 2024 were evaluated by algorithms they never knew existed. The Law of Human Primacy — why a human rubber-stamping an AI decision isn't the same as a human making one. The Law of Honest Attribution — why AI washing is one of the most underreported forms of corporate dishonesty happening right now. The Law of True Cost Accounting — why the real costs of workforce cuts don't disappear, they just move to taxpayers and communities. And the Law of Reversibility — the full Klarna story, and why 31% of companies that made AI-driven layoffs ended up worse off than if they'd never

February 19, 2026: AI is rapidly becoming a career requirement and the workforce is splitting into those who can adapt and those who get squeezed. In today's episode, I cover 5 stories that reveal what's changing right now: The best AI job risk analysis I've seen: who's exposed, who can adapt, and which roles are most vulnerable Accenture reportedly tying promotions to AI tool adoption—what this signals and why it can backfire Why the "AI will replace you" narrative is dangerous—and how fear distorts leadership decisions Walmart's approach: training 1.6 million workers on AI instead of using AI as a reason to cut headcount Google + Ipsos data: only 5% of workers are AI fluent—and the gap is already linked to raises and promotions I also share the bigger takeaway: the future isn't just "learn AI." It's building adaptive capacity, creating real mobility pathways, and upgrading people at scale while keeping human judgment and accountability at the center. If you lead people, culture, or strategy, thi

The U.S. economy is creating wealth… but not many jobs. At the same time, AI is spreading across the workplace, yet most employees still don't trust it to run without human oversight. In today's episode of Future Ready Today, I break down the signals behind the "jobless boom," what the Federal Reserve is warning leaders about, why the job-switching pay premium is collapsing, and the rise of AI agents that can literally hire humans to do real-world work. Stories covered: Only 17% trust workplace AI without human oversight The shrinking job-hopping premium and the loyalty tax The Fed's three AI labor-market scenarios (including a "jobless boom") Growth without jobs: investment, output, and the widening GDP–jobs gap AI agents hiring humans: the rise of the "Human API" economy  

Feb 17, 2026: Today I break down five signals that are quietly reshaping work: OpenAI hiring the creator of OpenClaw—a major shift from chatbots that talk to agents that act Why "supervisors are disappearing," and how title inflation is quietly breaking the career ladder The AI productivity paradox (backed by new NBER research): adoption is real, impact is lagging Anthropic's push into "work tools" and the battle to own the workflow layer Australia's psychosocial safety rules—and why well-intentioned mandates can spiral into dependency, bureaucracy, and leadership abdication if we don't draw boundaries  

Leaders today face a critical AI dilemma: move too quickly and risk producing low-quality "work slop," or move too slowly and sacrifice a crucial competitive edge in innovation. But one global real estate powerhouse, managing 3% of the world's GDP, has successfully navigated this tightrope for nearly three years, offering a proven model for enterprise AI adoption. In this episode, Prologis CHRO Nathaalie Carey reveals how the company solved this dilemma with an "innovation first" strategy, a journey that began by deploying an enterprise version of ChatGPT well ahead of the curve. Prologis achieved this by deliberately empowering its workforce, intentionally prioritizing widespread innovation over premature governance. By providing direct access to tools, supported by strategic training, the company drove 95% adoption rate and sparked over 1,000 crowdsourced custom GPTs. Carey explains how the company built trust by reframing AI as a "bargain" to trade mundane tasks for high-value strategic work. She also deta

Feb 13, 2026: Inflation just cooled to 2.4%. Markets are betting on rate cuts. And at the same time, Anthropic raised $30 billion at a $380 billion valuation. That's not coincidence — it's transition. In today's episode, I break down: • What falling inflation actually means for capital and corporate strategy • Why Anthropic's massive funding round signals intelligence becoming infrastructure • The U.S. Department of Labor's new national AI literacy framework — and what it means for workforce strategy • The "AI scare trade" hitting markets beyond tech • Why IBM is tripling entry-level hiring in the middle of AI disruption This isn't about hype. It's about capital flows, workforce redesign, and how leadership must evolve as intelligence scales. When the cost of capital falls and the cost of intelligence falls, the cost of standing still rises. Let's unpack what this moment really means.

Feb 12, 2026: In this episode of Future-Ready Today, I break down four major stories that reveal how the workplace is recalibrating in 2026. Ford is boosting companywide bonuses to 130% after major quality improvements — a clear signal that performance discipline is back. At the same time, 60% of Gen Z say they plan to pursue skilled trade careers, challenging the long-standing college-to-corporate pipeline. I also dive into a new Harvard Business Review study showing that AI isn't reducing workloads — it's intensifying them. Employees are working faster, taking on broader responsibilities, and extending their hours, often voluntarily. And as AI adoption accelerates, safety leaders at major AI firms are quitting, raising deeper questions about ethics, speed, and institutional trust. If you're a leader trying to understand compensation strategy, talent shifts, productivity pressure, and cultural tension in an AI-accelerated world, this episode is for you.

Leaders often try to "brute force" AI adoption, only to find their best people pushing back. The blame often goes to a lack of skill. But this friction is actually caused by a crisis of identity where high performers feel their professional value is being replaced by an algorithm. To overcome this means moving from "enforcement" to "normalization" by focusing on how people actually work. In this episode of Future Ready Today, I break down eight exclusive insights from Uber's CTO, Praveen Neppalli Naga, on why organizational velocity, not just efficiency, is the new competitive divide. Expect a deep dive into why ROI obsession sabotages growth, how to disassemble jobs into tasks, and why the real risk of AI isn't job loss, but the threat of rogue agents. We also unpack why HR and Tech must now operate as a single leadership system to keep culture from becoming purely software-driven. ---------- Quick heads-up: my new book, The 8 Laws of Employee Experience, is a practical playbook for building an environment w

Feb 10, 2026: Today's leaders are buried under an avalanche of trend reports and news cycles, making it nearly impossible to distinguish between genuine structural shifts and mere media noise. This "trend inflation" has created a cycle of reactive decision-making and to move forward, leaders are required to shift from simple awareness to discernment—the ability to separate a true signal from temporary hype. In this episode of Future Ready Today, I give you a practical walkthrough of the STEEPLE framework to help your organization categorize every emerging trend into one of three actions: adapt, pause, or push back. By examining a case study of a manufacturing company evaluating AI for performance reviews, I teach you how to interrogate the context of a trend rather than just copying a headline. We're focusing on using internal data and organizational values to ensure innovation fits the company's unique culture rather than being forced upon it. Not Every Trend Deserves Action. ---------- Future-ready organiza

The old playbooks for leadership no longer apply when your top performers might never step foot in a traditional office. It's time to move past the superficial logistics of where people sit and uncover the specific cultural habits that maintain high standards and relentless speed as your organization evolves. In this episode, LJ Brock, Chief People Officer at Coinbase, joins me to explore the high-stakes evolution of leading a remote-first organization that scales without losing its competitive edge. We dive into the practical reality of managing 5,000 global employees, moving beyond the "return to office" debate to discuss Coinbase's "magnet, not mandate" hub strategy and their recent pivot toward mandatory quarterly in-person sessions designed specifically for execution. LJ pulls back the curtain on the unique operating system that powers their culture—including the bold decision to outlaw committees—and shares the specific decision-making frameworks, like the Directly Responsible Individual (DRI) and Probl

Feb 6, 2026: Artificial intelligence is hitting a tipping point — and it's showing up everywhere at once. In today's episode of Future-Ready Today, I break down a wave of stories that all landed at the same time: Big Tech's plan to spend roughly $650 billion on AI infrastructure, a trillion-dollar selloff in software stocks, healthcare workers protesting the use of AI on the front lines, and a new wave of state AI laws set to reshape how employers use technology at work. Taken together, these stories reveal how AI is no longer just a technology trend — it's becoming a force reshaping markets, labor, and regulation simultaneously.

Feb 5, 2026: Are software vendors in trouble? Why are employees suddenly complying with return-to-office mandates? And what happens when leaders are afraid to ask their own teams for feedback? In today's episode of Future-Ready Today, we unpack five stories that together reveal a major reset happening inside organizations: Why Workday is cutting jobs — and what falling enterprise software stocks (including ServiceNow) signal about how AI is disrupting traditional SaaS business models. New data showing workers backing down on return-to-office demands as employers reclaim leverage. A leadership study revealing that senior executives want feedback — but fear appearing weak if they ask. Layoffs surging to the highest January level since 2009, driven in part by restructuring at UPS following shifts in volume from Amazon. And research from Bain & Company showing a massive disconnect between leaders who think change is working and employees who say it isn't.  

Feb 4, 2026: In this episode of Future-Ready Today, I explore a fundamental shift in the workplace: the transition from a task economy to a trust economy. As artificial intelligence moves from "future tech" to "daily tool," the basic mechanics of how we hire, manage, and let go of people are under intense pressure. We aren't just dealing with new software; we're dealing with a breakdown in identity and accountability. I dive deep into five stories shaping this week's headlines: The Deepfake Candidate: Why identity verification is becoming the most critical new skill in HR. California's Algorithmic Guardrails: The new legislative push to ensure humans—not code—remain responsible for firing decisions. The "Job Apocalypse" Debate: Analyzing Ben Horowitz's take on why new work emerges even as old categories vanish. The $818 Billion Admin Tax: How poorly designed organizations are drowning in emails, and why AI might be the only way out. The AI Layoff Script: Why "technology made us do it" is becoming th

Feb 3, 2026: We start with the rise of "résumé Botox," where experienced professionals are removing years of experience just to get past hiring filters. Then we look at new data showing how Americans are rethinking what "safe jobs" look like in an AI-driven economy, with growing confidence in hands-on and blue-collar work. From there, we explore the next phase of automation as AI moves beyond screens and into the physical world — with robots learning to operate in messy, real-world environments. We also go inside Google's Project EAT to understand how one of the world's largest companies is turning AI from a personal productivity tool into a standardized operating model. Finally, we examine why the construction labor gap is shrinking — and why that may say more about slowing demand and capital cycles than a true solution to labor shortages. Each story stands on its own, but together they point to a bigger shift in how experience, skills, and job security are being redefined.