Is the Introvert Economy here to stay?
38:27 Share

Hi, I'm Cardiff Garcia, and this is The New Bazaar. Coming up on today's show... We're all different, and we all contribute in different ways. And I think a healthy economy offers a place for everyone, no matter how they are. Alison Schrager on the introvert economy and how to manage risk in your career and your life.

Hey everyone, Cardiff here and I'm joined by my friend Allison Traeger. Allison, hello. So good to be here. Allison, you are an economist. You're a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. You're the author of a book called An Economist Walks Into a Brothel. You're the economist who walked into the brothel, by the way. Several times, yeah. Several times. And here's how I would characterize your work. You like to apply the concepts of risk management

which you sort of gleaned from your background as a financial economist, and then you apply those concepts to other parts of our lives, of everyday life, our careers, and other things that we go through. Is that a fair characterization? Yeah, because finance is just a lot of transactions to put a price on risk, but we do this all the time elsewhere. The only difference with finance is it's just a higher volume. And we do it explicitly, right? Yeah, we do it explicitly, although we probably do it more explicitly in other areas. We just don't realize it.

But just the sheer volume of financial transactions makes it a little bit easier and a little bit more obvious to sort of draw, I guess, scientific inferences from it. But it really is everywhere. Well, the topic I wanted to talk to you about today, and these concepts of risk are going to come up, is from a column you wrote really provocatively titled from about a month ago in Bloomberg, where you're a columnist. The title was Introverts Are Taking Over the Economy.

And the column was inspired by one of your friend's complaints about a date she was going on. What happened? Yeah, so I was out with a friend. She's lived in New York 20 years. She's just impossibly glamorous, always has cool things to do. She was telling me about this date she was having. And she was like, well, I mean, you want to meet at 6 o'clock. I mean, just can you believe it? Like, I wouldn't. I mean, like, who goes out to dinner before 730? And, like, I'm actually someone who's always liked early dining. Yeah.

But I feel like post-pandemic, this has been my world where everyone's going to dinner early. Yeah, this is a thing. And it's not just I mean, most surprising it's in New York. I believe I just read somewhere that 530 is the fastest growing reservation time. And it's cross country. I looked at data from the American Time Use Study. And what you do see is this big drop in dining times, particularly amongst younger people.

I want to be clear. This isn't going to dinner early and then still staying out till super late, 2 a.m. or whatever. It's going to dinner early and turning in early and doing everything earlier and generally just not going out and partying as hard as before, right? Yeah, because it's not just we go out earlier. You also look at the amount of time people spent out, and that hasn't increased. Okay, so...

I want to go through the evidence showing that the economy is becoming more introverted, or I don't know how to describe it. Introvert-friendly might be the right way to define it. But first, I actually want to talk about a concept that you've shared with me before, which is this idea that when you apply risk to going out, you arrive at kind of an interesting conclusion based on the emergence of new technologies. Yeah.

Yeah. So we think about it. I mean, we didn't think of it this way before, but now it's a little bit more obvious. Every time you go out, I mean, you are taking a risk, right?

in a sense. And I mean, things could go horribly wrong. You can meet a horrible person. They could make you feel bad. You get hit by a car. All these things could happen. Bad party. You might, you know, I don't know, get food poisoning. It could get awkward. It could be weird. Yeah, it could be weird. And in fact, for my latest book, I was talking to a professor, I think she was at Tulane, about she was studying young people's social habits. I think she was a sociologist. And we were discussing this trend in young people not dating.

And I always assumed that young people weren't dating as much because there's evidence they're more risk averse. And I assume they're like afraid of getting hurt or like rejected or something like that. Yeah, like things that worried me when I was that age. And she said, no, they're concerned about awkwardness. They're afraid to go on dates with people they don't know because they're worried it could get awkward.

So are people just becoming worse at socializing generally? Are they becoming worse at dating? What's going on there? Both. I mean, like, awkward laughter is like how you get through a bad date. It seems like a good life skill. I was sort of familiar with the research showing that young people, including, I think, beginning in their teens...

are doing less of the behavior that our parents used to warn us against when we were young, but that now everybody's worried about the avoidance of that behavior. So young people, I think, are drinking less. They're having less sex. They're doing fewer drugs. Not driving. They're not driving as much. They're not getting their driver's license. And...

And, you know, in the past, it was I think parents would be like, great, I don't want my kid drinking or whatever. But it's gotten to the point now where a lot of people are just worried that everybody's, I don't know, on their smartphone all the time and they're not going out taking some risks and having fun. Yes, this is what we're just talking about is the way I see it is it every time you go out, it's a risk to some degree. But before we kind of had to take that risk. We didn't even think of it as a big risk because like what else were you going to do?

They stay in and watch mass reruns. Exactly. So now with streaming, with all the wonderful things in our phones and ways of connecting with people, it's like you can have like – it's sort of this concept in finance that sort of anchors when people make a financial decision is the risk-free rate, right? It's how you value risk and how much – it's sort of a barometer of how much risk you need to take to reach your financial goal. So if risk-free rate is 8%, as we just saw when interest rates went way up, like –

Although they didn't go up to 8%, but they got pretty high. There was just like all of a sudden people putting all their money in high-yield savings accounts because why invest in the stock market when you can get 5% for certain? So the analog here to a really high risk-free rate in finance is...

Netflix. Netflix. You're going to have an awesome time at home guaranteed because you have so much choice over what to watch on Netflix or what to stream on, I don't know, Spotify if you like music. You can get any book at your fingertips. You can stay in. You're guaranteed to have a really good time versus if you're going to go out, you're going to spend money. You're going to, I don't know, put on a good outfit, whatever. It could rain. And, like, you're going through all this work and the return on that effort is phenomenal.

less certain. Exactly. And in fact, you can even feel like you're being social. You can just swipe on an app and feel like you're even dating. Yeah. Even though you're obviously not, you're just swiping. Yeah. And it all feels very sort of like low risk. And also, if you think about it, before as well, you had to go out to meet people. And you not only that, like you had to ask someone out when you met them, you had to ask for their phone number and all these sorts of things, which there's evidence now that young people feel like this is creepy behavior. Yeah.

And they're just more comfortable asking people out on apps where sort of, you know, it's understood this is why you're there. Because it's clear in both cases, if you're asking someone out on an app, it's clear that you're both there to date. Whereas if you're just out at a bar or something, you might be interested in dating. But if you go up to someone and you ask her for her number or whatever, she might not be there for that. And the perception has changed. That used to be more common behavior. And if it happened, she wasn't interested and she rejects you.

no big deal, it happens. But now it's like, hey, what are you doing? You should respect the boundaries or whatever. Yeah. If you think about it, that old way, you were putting yourself out there. And that's important. I mean, because there's no way around the fact that being in a relationship is putting yourself out there and taking a risk. The danger in what you're describing, of course, is that some really wonderful outcomes can happen when you do go out and you take that risk. The problem is that you're now contending with

A 100% chance that you're at least going to have a pretty good time if you stay at home. But no upside. But no upside. Versus if you go out and you take that risk, let's say there's, I don't know, a 50% chance that you'll have a really terrible time. But maybe there's a 50% chance or lower chance, I don't know, that you're going to like knock it out of the park and meet the person that someday you're going to marry or whatever. Exactly. Or make a great friendship even. You know, whatever it is that you're looking for, the upside could be enormous, but...

It's way, way less certain. When I wrote the column for Bloomberg, you get all these comments and most of them were like, I feel seen. But one of them, I kind of had this one line about, well, I mean, but you don't get that magical experience of meeting someone you connect with at a party and then going out to dinner and like sharing a bottle of wine till 2 a.m. because you just can't stop talking to each other. I'm actually not sure I've ever had that experience, but I've seen it in movies. It looked great. And I understand other people have had it. And like someone was just like, what sort of sicko wants to do that? Yeah.

Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, even by Internet comments, that seemed pretty dark. Let's go through some of the evidence that the economy is becoming a little bit more introverted or introvert friendly if it's not quite the case that introverts have literally taken over the economy. One is we shop online more than we did before the pandemic. That's accelerated. It was already trending up, by the way. It was a big jump. But there was a big jump. And, you know, it hasn't gone down.

Right. Like it just went up and like it's just sort of like sitting there. Yeah. So we shop online more instead of going to retail stores. Afternoon office holiday parties are becoming a thing. This is more anecdotal as opposed to having parties at night because then you might be out until, I don't know, super late past your bedtime. Oh, no. You might get drunk and kiss your coworker or something. Definitely still advise against that. Young adults are drinking way less than young adults of the past.

Mm-hmm.

More younger Americans, that's Americans beneath the age of 50, are arriving at restaurants before 7 p.m., which is, I think, what you were talking about. This is from the government's American Time Use Survey, which is one of your favorite things to look at, right? It's a fun survey. Very fun survey. It's on the census and very easy to access for all the data nerds. This is a statistic that I think when you hear it is...

pretty shocking, although it's something that, again, it's a trend that has been happening, but I think isn't as really accelerated since the pandemic. If you look at Americans of 18 years and above, 18 years old and above, they're

On the weekends, we spend on average 1.8 hours socializing with each other. That's in-person socializing. But 6.3 hours either watching TV or playing video games, looking at screens. That's three and a half times as much time looking at screens as talking to each other. And that gap has really widened quite a bit in the last, again, couple of decades. What do you think about that?

Well, I mean, I'm probably guilty of this myself. But again, it's just it's so much easier. Like I just rewatched the first season of Sex and the City. And it's like it is shocking how different social norms have changed. Like they're out all the time. Yeah. And they're out late. I mean, obviously, you know. Pulling from a television show of the early 2000s of some definitely very social people. Or like, I mean, granted, I was in graduate school and I was in New York, but I was in graduate school, so I didn't go out much in my 20s. But I'm told they still go out quite a bit.

So I didn't have the experience, but I'm told it was a very social time. Here's a question. To what extent do you think...

this is interacting with another trend, which is working from home, because that is something where obviously during the pandemic, there was all this widespread experimentation with people working from home more. There were a lot of debates early on about whether or not people would start going back to the office, whether the entire trend would be undone. What's happened is something in between, which is a lot of people who are fully remote

working from home, did start returning to the office. But it looks now like the levels have stabilized around a place where about 10% of workers are fully remote and another 10% of workers are doing this hybrid thing where sometimes they're working from home, sometimes they are at the office. So clearly this is a trend that has some staying power. And I'm kind of curious to know if you think that these two trends of like people consuming things in a more introverted way are—

Whether that's interacting with the way that people work, the way they produce things, which is also becoming, it seems, a little bit more introvert friendly. Yeah, I mean, for sure. I mean, in some ways it is introvert friendly because I think it appeals to natural introverts. But the people who are fans of work from home, when I'm always like, well, what about culture and connecting with your colleagues? And they always say, oh, well, you can do off sites, which to me sounds like mating captivity to me. Like, here's your coworkers, be friends. But

I think that's also particularly bad for introverts. Like introverts should not be fighting for this because introverts I know like aren't comfortable being in like high pressure social situations where they have to be on. You know, I heard like, oh, we can do digital water coolers where like a junior person is matched with like a CEO and they can just talk. It's like I don't know any introvert who can deal with that. Introverts I know are better at more natural social interactions where they can get to get to be known slowly and where they're comfortable, like working on a project together in person.

So while it might sound good that introverts can just work from home all the time, I think in some ways it puts them at a disadvantage because the opportunities you have to connect with your colleagues and form those social connections, which are still actually really important for your long-term success,

are just now much more high-pressure social situations. Yeah, it's interesting because from the way you're describing it, it sounds like introverts are both winners and losers from this trend towards a more introvert-friendly economy because on the one hand, their skill sets can become the valuable ones, right? Their ability to work by themselves, their ability to sort of be self-starters, don't need as much guidance, that kind of thing, don't need to be around people quite as much. That's helpful to them. Mm-hmm.

But if it also kind of deprives them of that, like, kick in the ass where they're forced to go out and socialize with people, it might be unhealthy for them as well. Exactly. Because, I mean, sometimes as well they get guilty to go into a party and, you know, they meet the love of their life or they make a good friend. And now, you know, they can definitely, you know, feel more empowered and not going out at all. Or as I said, or might never form those sort of workplace connections that are

not only socially satisfying, but also important to your career. Let's talk about other winners and losers. Who else benefits from this trend of people not going out as much or turning in early, that kind of thing? I guess delivery men, for sure. Makers of athleisure wear. Sure. People who want to wear comfortable stuff around the house are going to go out and buy that stuff. Yeah, and the producers of them. Yep.

So it's helpful for them. I'm wondering if it might also be good for physical health, at least if people are drinking less, going out less, turning in early, earlier bedtimes, that kind of thing. Yeah, that's true. Maybe not mental health, but probably good for physical health. Physical health might be a winner. Emotional health might be a loser from this trend. I'm guessing things like streaming services and the kinds of goods that you buy to make your house a little nicer. So TVs, that kind of thing, right? Yeah, or people wanting outdoor space. Right. Lawn furniture. Yeah.

Other losers are what? Bars? Yeah, bars. Or actually what I anticipate is neighborhood restaurants and bars. Because if you're just going to have people coming in earlier and not staying out as late, particularly a lot of the high margin business is people drinking and drinking like a lot late. Then what you're going to have is chain restaurants are going to be better.

Right. Because they have more volume and they're more, say, bigger economies of scale. So they can handle having sort of these lower margin businesses as opposed to if you're a local mom and pop, you need that couple falling in love, staying out till 2 a.m. and drinking bottle after wine or bottle after wine. That's where they make their money. The idea that some of these trends were accelerated by the pandemic, but that the trends themselves do predate the pandemic. Right.

seems to suggest that the trends themselves are going to last, that they're here to stay. On the other hand, we've seen a lot of times before that some trends have a backlash and then there's a counter trend. And in particular, I'm wondering if people will realize, hey, all this screen time is not healthy for me.

I need to get out there and have some fun. There are some people who are trying to start like the offline is the new online movement and they make some compelling points. And I'm kind of wondering where you fall on that. What do you think?

There might be some backlash, but I mean, this technology is not going away and it is kind of appealing. We are like lazy people. So I can't imagine this could completely go away, but there might be some of a backlash. I mean, there's certainly a movement to have kids be on screens less. Also, I wonder with in terms of the work from home and being less engaged with work, how that will survive a recession.

Because there's already evidence that people who are not seen in the office or the first ones fired are not getting the same pay raises. So when people experience that...

It's been a while since we've had a bad economy, right? It's been like, what, since 2008, since we've been through lots of layoffs? I mean, there was a period during the COVID pandemic, certainly. It didn't last very long, but it was a sharp, sharp downturn. And it bounced back, I think, a lot more quickly than people had anticipated when it first happened. But it was bad. It was bad, but it was kind of like this economy-wide thing, and you couldn't go out and look for a job anyway. Right.

So, and like your entire department was laid off for a pandemic. But now what you'll have is people were showing up, not getting laid off, but you did because you didn't come in or you work from home more. So I think that might sort of shake up people's enthusiasm for work from home. Because, I mean...

And granted, I am probably not the best messenger. I've like only had a two-year period of my entire career where I had to go to an office every day. So you are a work-from-home person, a lifelong work-from-home person. I am. And I know from what I speak, it has problems. But it is important. What are the problems? What are the problems? Well, I mean, we are ultimately, at the end of the day, social creatures. And whether or not you advance at work isn't just doing your job. It's really forming connections and being well-liked and well-regarded by your employees and building that community. Right.

And I think as well, people forget is it's not just doing your job. It's also mentoring people like you got your skills or getting mentored if you're a young person. Yeah. Starting out. Yeah. You got your skills from somewhere. And it's not just mentoring people. It's also people championing you. Like when you're kind of new in your career and someone just liking you and being like, you know, I think you're ready for this big step. And it wouldn't have been a step you would have occurred for you to take.

So it's mentors and champions. And I just don't see how that happens remotely. And then the tradeoffs there, the good things are that there's fewer distractions at the office. You get rid of commuting time, which is a big deal for a lot of people. Yeah, and getting dressed in the morning. You know, having to get dressed in the morning and so forth.

And also, I think that when you really need head down time, like I need to get my work done right now with no distractions, you really can do that because you're in an environment that you yourself have controlled. And so I think we can weigh those two things. And for a lot of people, it depends on the specific job and the adaptations that a workplace makes. Right. I think it's also really good for women. I mean, there's all these studies that one of the reasons the wage gap has persisted is women, particularly mothers, need more flexibility.

to be home for their kids when they want to be. And effectively, like Claudia Golden's research has shown, just like flexibility was a very expensive benefit in the past. And so women had to take a big wage cut. So they had that flexibility. There is evidence post-pandemic women's labor force participation said it's like all time high. And you think working from home is a contributor to that? Yeah, because the flexibility is now a lot cheaper.

In the sense that it's being offered to everybody. It's not like an extra thing that's being offered to women. It's just that working from home exists for whoever's there. And women in the past...

who needed that flexibility, well, now they've got it as part of the offering of the workplace. Yeah, because it's just now a workplace norm. Like before, it was super important to be in the office all the time. And like if a client called to be like, yes, I'm in the office and I'm here to help you, as opposed to now, like the social norm of you call someone and they're like, yeah, I'm at home because, you know, my kid's sick. It's like, OK. And no one thinks anything of it. So men's labor force participation is pretty much where it was pre-pandemic as opposed to women's is higher than ever.

So I suspect that work from home has been good for them because it just confers more flexibility. I have a question about

trying to figure out what happens in the next, I don't know, 10 to 20 years based on some of the trends that we've already discussed, like work from home or let's say the economy continues to become more and more introverted or there's a backlash and so forth. In your first book, An Economist Walks Into a Brothel, you talk a lot about the different kinds of risk that people face at work and how they mitigate those risks or how they manage those risks, I should say. And I have found that I have no idea what to tell people these days about how to like

how to offset potential future risks, right? It seems like

You almost have to just become more comfortable with the fact that the labor market is going to fluctuate all over the place in the future and that it's really hard to anticipate these trends. And here's a more specific example I have in mind. We're talking about all the ways that the economy might become more introvert friendly, like working from home and so forth. But let's say that because of artificial intelligence, a lot of the tasks that people do at work that used to require people

higher levels of education just become automated away because of AI. That doesn't mean that those jobs are all going to disappear. It just means that the new jobs that are created, which I think will happen, might require different skills, might value different skills than the economy had been valuing in the

past. And for example, maybe then the skills that matter will be, I don't know, charisma or likability or your ability to be very social. And so it's like we have on the one hand, maybe it'll be a very introvert friendly economy, or on the other hand, maybe it'll be very extrovert friendly economy. I have no idea what to tell people. So I'm just kind of curious to know how you're thinking about this. Yeah, I see interpersonal skills having a higher value because you want to think of what is AI going to offer and what can I complement with AI in terms of my skills? And

And being very personable and having good people skills is certainly, you know, it's always valuable because, I mean, I don't have these skills, but I have noticed a new job I've had. Being able to sell things, super important. I don't know how to do this, but I admire people who do. Not just selling things, but in some real sense sort of selling yourself, selling your ideas, convincing people that you're the right person for the job and then doing the job well and so forth. And that takes a great personality.

So you definitely want to cultivate that. Why do you say you don't have those skills? You sell the book. You sell columns. You sell your ideas all the time. That's true. But I've never like sold an M&A service. That's a very stereotypical way of thinking of selling things, right? In some sense, we're all using, you know,

tactics of persuasion. I don't mean like to manipulate people or anything, but we're trying to persuade people that our ideas are good ones. They're valuable ones that they're worth paying for that kind of thing. That's just normal. And to be honest, I don't think it comes naturally to me. I think it's something I've worked on and spent by spending time with other people.

Okay. So I think that's another way you can fall into the introvert trap. I said I've never really had a job where I had to work with people a lot, but I have tried to go into offices somewhat regularly when I had the opportunity to. So sort of as well, learn those skills, especially because so much of my early career was in academia where you are just sort of sitting alone. And your social skills, I noticed, went very stale.

Like I felt like I had decent social skills coming out of college. And then I spent six years alone in a room. Buried in textbooks and doing research and solving equations. Yeah. And like I was a weird person in that time. And I came out of grad school even weirder. So I had to like relearn how to be around people.

And so I don't think we want a world where everyone was like how I was then. So does that mean that the best way for let's take a young person and I should be clear, we really are to this point talking mainly about jobs that affect people.

well-educated people who come out of colleges with a college degree or maybe even go to grad school, things like that. In a second, I do want to talk about the workforce more widely. But is that what you would tell somebody who, let's say, is 22 years old, just got their college degree, to develop a mix of those two skills of the sort of

you know, personality traits and things like that, selling yourself, et cetera, and also being able to be dogged and put your head down and all that. I mean, this all sounds very idealistic, but is that what you're saying? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's basically, I mean, I think this advice is old as time. No matter what technology you're facing is be likable, be easy to work with, and do good work and work hard. I mean, I think that's always been true and it hasn't changed. And I think for young people today, they have the opportunity to stand out. Like I have a cousin who just started her first job

And she was telling me that she was assigned to a group that's all remote. So she goes into the office and never sees anyone. The next group over is in person. And she sees her coworkers also at her level getting all this mentorship and training and the senior people getting attached to them. And I was like, change groups. There is a meme that started like 10 years ago that was known as learn to code. This was the new advice was,

Hey, if you want to really succeed, make a lot of money and also have a stable career in the future. As of, I don't know, the middle of the last decade, it was learn to be a programmer, learn how to code. That then became something that people just kind of made fun of a little bit. Right. But it was still, I think, taken seriously because there are a lot of really good jobs as programmers, software developers and so forth. Right.

And now it's like things have shifted a little bit and people are saying, well, no, the AI might do all the coding in the future. Artificial intelligence might do all this work. So if you're a coder, you'll be obsolete. In like 10 years, we went from learn to code being good advice to, oh, my God, coding might become obsolete at some point in the future. I'm just kind of curious to know what your reaction to something like that is. Well, it depends.

I mean, how you took that advice. Because, I mean, yeah, writing code is not looking as useful now. But on the other hand, if you learned how to code well, you learned critical thinking skills and complex problem skills. So anyway, you might not spend it writing code now if you learned it properly. You want to learn how to be adaptable and flexible and be a good critical thinker.

So it depends. Again, some people learn how to code very sort of like mechanically. Other people take coding as an approach to problem solving. And I anticipate those people are going to be just fine. I want to ask another question about introverts and extroverts in the workplace. And here's where I want to...

say that, you know, we've been talking about introverts and extroverts the way I think a lot of people use those terms. Introverts are maybe, you know, indoors more often, more comfortable being indoors, less comfortable being around lots of people and always on at the time.

You know, extroverts are the opposite. That's a little bit unfair. And we're in pretty mysterious territory here. We're talking about like these psychological terms and how they apply. And let's be honest, a lot of us can have traits of both introverts and extroverts. And that's totally normal. That's totally fine. I take some of the definitions that I use for introversion and extroversion from Susan Cain, who wrote this book more than a decade ago now called Quiet, which is a book about introverts and extroverts.

which consolidated a lot of the existing research on introversion and extroversion. And what she said is that basically the thing that psychologists mostly agree on is that introverts, they tend to like less stimulating environments, right? And by stimulating, I don't mean intellectually stimulating or whatever. I mean, when you literally have lots of physical stimulations coming at you, introverts tend to draw their energy from less stimulating environments. Extroverts tend

can draw their energy from more stimulating environments. And there's lots of, you know, room to be on the spectrum here, right? You know, on one end or the other. And she also wrote this great quote about one of the traits of introverts versus extroverts that has to do with risk-taking. This is why I want to ask you about it. Oh, I don't remember that part of the book. I'm going to read this quote now, if that's okay. So this is, again, from Susan Cain in Quiet Quote.

The blindness to danger may explain why extroverts are more likely than introverts to be killed while driving, be hospitalized as a result of accident or injury, smoke, have risky sex, participate in high-risk sports, have affairs, and remarry. It also explains why extroverts are more prone than introverts to overconfidence, defined as greater confidence unmatched by greater ability."

So the idea here is that extroverts... Sounds a little bitter.

No, not. But it was it was I pulled that quote, you know, in the context of a wider, more subtle discussion, more nuanced discussion. It wasn't actually bitter at all. She has really nice things to say about extroverts, too. But the idea is that introverts are really good at protecting the downside. Yeah. Extroverts are maybe better at taking big risks. They're more comfortable taking big risks. And it occurs to me that maybe the best thing for a workplace is a mix of both, because there's really good things that can come from taking big risks.

But it's also good to have somebody who understands and can evaluate the downside. Like an actuary. Like an actuary. What do you think about that? No, I think you need both. I mean, ideally, we're taking insured risks, right, where we get upside but have downside protected. But, I mean, you need a bit of both. And that's why I think, you know, we don't want to do too much work from home because you do want those people working together. Right.

And sort of the actuary being like, well, you know, this could happen. And this is how we want to think about it. And I want to make sure you're insured. So, I mean, that's why having a bit of balance is both and having these people interact with each other is super useful. Are you so pessimistic, though, about the possibility that workplaces will come up with new ways of having people socialize that can involve remote work?

You mean like the off-sites? No, no, no. And the digital water coolers? No, but what I mean, for example, is the hybrid work idea seems like an adaptation. That's one. Another is that maybe the kinds of

healthy agglomeration effects that you get from people working together sometimes. Like maybe some of those can be replicated through online communications technology, which has gotten better and better and better. And maybe you come up with another way of people, you know, getting together in person, but less frequently. Or by the way, you set up an actual physical office, but with fewer of the kinds of sort of

of impossible to stop interruptions that you got in the workplaces of the past. Maybe you give people a little more autonomy over when they can be alone in the physical office versus when they actually want to collaborate. You know, maybe the compromise is just going to have open office plans.

Yeah, I hate open office plans. No one likes them. No one likes them, but they were the standard for a lot of office places in the past. And you know, it's the worst because it seems like from what I hear when I talk to people who are doing hybrid work is they're like, well, because we're only in the office three days a week, we should all like now be out there and have complete open office. I think the better compromise is...

You know, work from home should just become more of an option if you need it. I said, like, if you have a sick kid, it should be like now completely normal to just be like, all right, I'm gonna work from home today and not feel like a thing. Yeah. But then we should also get rid of open office plans and have people in the office most of the time. So I think that's the best of both worlds. And I say this as someone who will never probably work in an office myself.

But I've seen it. I don't think it's good for other people. And I think the problem with just having more online talking is, you know, when I have worked in offices, I did notice something.

when you're working on an innovation, which I was working on a new financial product, often like the best ideas would come is we'd have a meeting, a formal meeting. Some people might even dial in and, you know, would discuss the meeting and then the meeting would end. And then afterwards, like two or three of us would congregate in the coffee area and sort of like debrief on the meeting and just sort of talk. And this is usually where like, oh, you know, someone brought up this problem. Oh, I think this is the best idea. And we'd have this sort of interaction and sort of like

feed off each other's ideas. And it was always spontaneous. It was always those spontaneous moments that matter. Yeah, those are maybe the hardest to replicate. Yeah, and they're super important. And as I said, also in terms of building relationships, like I think what I am is a shy extrovert. Okay. I guess I'm a little bit of both. Like I'm not someone who feels particularly comfortable in high-charge social situations where I have to be on.

But I do like being around people a lot. So I said if someone put me in like a mingling situation with the CEO of a company, like this would completely freak me out. But I remember sometimes the CEO would be getting coffee while I was and he'd be like, hey, Wilson, how are you? And I'd be like, oh, good. You know,

you know, and that would be a moment. And you'd strike up a chat. Yeah, I was comfortable with that, especially maybe the fifth time you said hi. It's funny that you describe yourself as a shy extrovert because I describe myself often as a very social introvert. Oh, interesting. I like being around people. I love public speaking. I love, obviously, I host a podcast and I love doing that. But I also really do need to

get some alone time to recharge. And that does happen frequently. I want to pivot now a little bit to projections for the labor market, which is something that the Bureau of Labor Statistics does every year. It does these like 10-year projections. The most recent ones we have are, what are the jobs that are going to be created through the year 2032? Okay. Yeah. And

I'm talking here about numbers of jobs in absolute terms. I'm not talking about the fastest growing industries or anything like that because, of course, those can start from a lower base and then grow much more quickly. I'm just talking about sheer numbers here, okay? So the one job that is going to be most created in the next 10 years, according to these projections, which, of course, can be wrong, is home health and personal care age. That's what I was going to say. Yeah. Okay.

That's a job that seems like it requires a lot of, you know, really strong social skills, likability, the ability to, you know, calm people down, to be interpersonally likable, that kind of thing. Yeah. And it's going to be in huge demand. Yeah. I was just talking to a retirement expert and he had such a great line, which was 70 really is the new 50, but 80 is still 80. Yeah. So like we have aging baby boomers. Yep. They're going to need a lot of care. Absolutely. Mm-hmm.

Two things that I noticed about the list of the top 15. I just gave you the number one job. Number two, though, is software developers. Number three is cooks at a restaurant. Number four is stockers and order fillers. And number five is registered nurses. Okay, I'm not going to list the next 10, but I'll tell you that of the top 15, five of them were in healthcare, which I think goes to your point about we're going to need a lot of care workers in the next decade or so.

But other than that, the other trend that I noticed was that I can't see any kind of consistency in terms of whether introvert-friendly traits versus extrovert-friendly traits are the ones that are going to be in most demand on this list.

Actuaries, too, I bet are going to be in demand. That's another. Maybe, although they're not on this list, but it's possible that you just don't need that many actuaries. Yeah, that's true. You might need way more than we have now, but maybe we just don't need that many. I think a healthy economy, I think one thing that I liked about Susan Cain's book when I read it is it sort of was celebrating that, hey, we're all different and we all contribute in different ways. And that's how I remember her message being. And I think a healthy economy offers a place for everyone.

No matter how they are. So I think that list in some ways is nice, is that, you know, if you are an extrovert, they'll probably be a great place for you. If you're an introvert as well, there'll probably be a way of contributing that will sort of balance and enhance other people, too. They're generally optimistic about the labor market in the next 10, 20 years. I think one thing you can glean looking at the labor market going back to ancient Sumeria is that...

People are really good at making themselves useful. May that continue. Final thoughts on how to manage career risk in the light of everything we just discussed. Get to know older people. Make them like you, naturally. And learn how to think well and critical skills. And I think always be open to learning. I think one thing, I've spoken to people who have adopted AI in their workplace already. And one complaint they have is they haven't fired anyone of AIs and taken anyone's job. But they have noticed a lot of people are reluctant to use it.

So I would caution against that. Run towards it, you mean? Run towards any new skill that you can learn. I once saw a good piece of advice that said when you're young, make sure you have lots of friends who are older. When you're older, make sure you have lots of friends who are younger. And I think for people like me and you who are maybe midway through our journey, just be friends with everybody, right? Yeah.

Yeah, that's true. I should work harder at that. What's your next book about? I'm exploring actually why we're becoming more risk averse in a world that's becoming less risky. Okay, perfect.

Yeah. So we are becoming more risk averse today. Yeah, when I tell people the world's becoming less risky, they never believe me. They're like, but what about this and that? Is it that the world is becoming less risky or that people are shying away from risk more than they used to? Both. Okay. Which is in some ways crazy because if the world is less risky, that should allow us to feel more empowered to take more risks. But we're not. We're doing the opposite. When does it come out? Oh, God, I don't know. Next year sometime. Okay.

Something to look forward to. Allison, thanks so much. This was fun. Thanks for having me. And that's our show for today. You can find links to the work done by Allison Schrager in the show notes for this episode. And you can also subscribe to her newsletter called Known Unknowns. It's via Substack and we'll link to that as well.

The New Bazaar is a production of Bazaar Audio from me and executive producer Amy Keene. Adrian Lilly is our sound engineer, and our music is by Scott Lane and DJ Harrison of Subfloor Studio. Please follow or subscribe to The New Bazaar on your app of choice, and if you enjoyed today's show, please leave us a review or tell a friend. If you want to get in touch, I'm on Twitter as at Cardiff Garcia, or you can email us at hello at bazaaraudio.com. I'll see you next episode.