So what? Reskilling is not really going to be our problem. We want to reskill the people who stay at our company, not the people who separate from our company. I think there’s going to be kind of two main types of tailwinds that are going to hit us, I think. But again, this is really hard for any of us to really know. I think there is going to be part which is serving institutions who will invest in their current and future employees who say, if I really want to improve the innovation and the quality of services I can deliver to my customers and improve the productivity of those employees who remain in my organization, I’m going to have to educate them to do that. But then I think there could be a consumer piece of this too. For all the employees who separate, they’re going to separate because their careers have been largely impacted and substantially automated.
You’re not going to go to some other company and get the same job that you just lost. You’re going to have to learn something new and get some new career because those job prospects are not going to be very attractive on the open job labor market. We are hopeful that a lot of those impacted employees will be able to, wherever you are in the world, whatever language you speak, you can come to Coursera. You can start with a professional certificate in the language of your choice. You can explore multiple job opportunities that are still in high demand that don’t require a college degree or any prior work experience, which is a defining characteristic of the way we’ve designed these with our partners. You can take these programs online, help you get into a new career and continue on and get a college degree.
I think there might be two major places. There’s the reskilling among future, existing and future employees, and maybe also reskilling in the consumer segment for those people who are really disrupted. I don’t know the percentage, but I can tell you this. According to McKinsey and a lot of people I’m talking to, there are certain kinds of jobs like software engineering, where the job is going to be impacted by software, by gender of AI, but at least according to McKinsey and others I hear from, there’s still going to be a demand for an increased demand for those skills and those jobs. On the other hand, you could look at customer operations. That’s also a job type that’s going to be impacted by a gender of AI, but unlike software engineering, it will result in a decrease in labor market demand for those types of jobs.
So even among jobs that will be impacted by gender of AI, for some it will have an overall negative impact on labor market demand on others, and what McKinsey says is that data scientists and computer scientists, they expect still to be increasing demand for those jobs. We’ll see how it shapes out, but I think as Ken said in his script, change creates opportunity. Whether it’s an opportunity or a threat depends on whether you have the access to education and the ability to actually skill yourself into the new opportunities that emerge.
Rishi Jaluria: Wonderful. That’s really helpful. And then maybe just quickly sticking on the enterprise segment, but moving a little bit to the government side. I guess if you’ve gone abroad and talked to different governments, what’s the willingness to not only adopt these solutions, but to bring about country-wide sponsorship of these? So it’s not just solutions targeted at government employees, at the wider cities, and I know you’ve had some success with that prior, but again, thinking to kind of the destruction of the society coming from AI, how are those conversations with government agencies and that use case involved? Thanks.
Jeff Maggioncalda: Yes, sure. If academic institutions are not built for adaptability, government institutions also are generally on the slower side to adapt. That being said, there are a lot of countries, particularly with younger populations, who are realizing there’s almost two paths. If you do invest in education and upgrade your educational system, give them the globalization of talent, the ability for people in your country to work for companies, domiciled in other countries, there could be pretty good job prospects for young people if they get the skills and if you can up-level these educational systems. On the other hand, if you don’t do that and you have a lot of young people in your country, if those young people are not facing good economic prospects, it becomes a problem.
So what I’ve been seeing is generally in smaller countries with younger populations, lower general disposable income, but an upwardly mobile middle class. This is Southeast Asia, this is India, this is Africa, this is certain parts of Latin America. We see governments more receptive and interested in moving more quickly. In more established countries that are a little bit wealthier with older populations, think Europe, it’s been the slowest. And frankly, North America has really come along in the second half of 2023. So we’re seeing some pretty nice innovation in North America. And I think there’s a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum saying, we need to create a better value proposition for Americans who are trying to get good access to jobs in a world that’s changing.
And frankly, should not have to pay so much and spend so much time trying to get a traditional degree. So it’s a pretty wide spectrum out there.
Rishi Jaluria: Wonderful. Thank you.
Jeff Maggioncalda: Yes.
Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Terry Tillman with Truist Securities.
Terry Tillman: Yes, thanks for taking my questions. And yes, I’m sorry, can you hear me?
Operator: Yes, go ahead. Thank you.
