Shalin Jyotishi, Founder and Managing Director of New America’s Future of Work and Innovation Economy Initiative: New Opportunities in the Innovation Economy

Mentioned in this episode:

newamerica.org/futureofwork

Resources for Educators on Federal Investments in the Innovation Economy

Van Ton-Quinlivan

Hello, I’m Van Ton-Quinlivan, CEO of Futuro Health, welcoming you to WorkforceRx, where I interview leaders and innovators for insights into creating a future-ready workforce.

Today’s guest perfectly fits that description, and you may have heard him before because he’s our first guest to appear twice on the podcast. As the founder and managing director of New America’s Future of Work and Innovation Economy Initiative, Shalin Jyotishi is focused on aligning science, workforce, labor, and innovation policies to renew the American middle class.

Aside from his role at New America, Shalin is a Forbes contributor covering higher education, labor, and workforce issues relating to science, industrial and innovation policy. We both sit on the advisory council for Apprenticeships for America, and it’s always good to have a chance to chat and catch up on the interesting work he’s doing.

So, thanks very much for joining us today.

Shalin Jyotishi

Always a pleasure Van. Thank you for having me.

Van

Absolutely. As I noted, you were on the podcast before – three years ago  — and perhaps the biggest development since then as it relates to your work is the passage of the CHIPS and Science Act. But before we get into the details on that, can you start with an overview on your Future of Work and Innovation Economy Initiative and its goals?

Shalin

Yeah, absolutely. The Future of Work and Innovation Economy Initiative is a research policy and practice change program. It’s housed at New America, which is a nonpartisan “think and do tank” based in Washington, DC. and we really work to ensure that economic development driven by technological or scientific advances actively contribute to the renewal of the American middle class, boosting economic security and well-being for families. To accomplish that mission, we aim to advance a more coordinated and integrated approach to federal science, industrial, and workforce policies.

You can think of these three distinct policy worlds — science policy, workforce policy, and industrial policy — as concentric circles and my team and I are situated at the intersection of them. So, we focus on those policy issues and then locally in terms of implementation — true to New America’s think and do tank model — we work directly with communities and local workforce institutions to learn about challenges and help address them. We learn and hone and refine our own policy agenda based on those experiences with folks on the ground closest to the problems we’re trying to solve and we expand public awareness around the many opportunities for building an innovation economy in which everyone can thrive by aligning technology and talent development. So needless to say, the CHIPS and Science Act has kept us really busy because so much of the bill was actually focused on that very objective. Our initiative really has two bodies of work and CHIPS has a lot to do with both of them. The first is around building the capacity of higher education and workforce institutions to be better positioned to respond to economic development and industrial policy investments coming into their communities and especially around the innovation economy, around emerging technologies. Then the second body of work is really focused around coming up with strategies to really elevate worker voice and labor in the innovation economy.

Van, you may recall that I did a stint on the AI staff at the World Economic Forum where we were studying how AI could improve job quality for workers. This was well before ChatGPT came on the scene and now the question is pretty vogue, but this leg of the initiative’s work actually is an extension of that partnership we had with the World Economic Forum. Likewise, we work with labor unions, with worker centers, and with employers around making sure that workplace tech and emerging technologies can be a win-win for workers and employers.

Van

Well, we’re looking forward to probing some of those areas where you’ve learned from the field in order to inform how to shape the policies in an integrated way at the federal level. Thank you for your good works.

So you mentioned, Shalin, the CHIPS Act. Could you give our audience a refresher on what’s in the act, what it intends to do, and what is the impact it’s making, or at least where does it stand in terms of status?

Shalin

Yeah, absolutely. So the CHIPS and Science Act was a multi-billion dollar piece of bipartisan legislation. It was passed in August 2022 and it was largely a response to growing economic and technological competition from overseas, from China in particular.  It was arguably one of the most significant attempts to spur economic growth and global competitiveness since Sputnik went up into space and the Cold War was really in full flux and the space race commenced.

There are two parts of the CHIPS and Science Act and both are really relevant to higher ed and workforce communities. So, first, CHIPS stands for Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors. The CHIPS part of the CHIPS Act aims to grow and strengthen the US semiconductor industry by subsidizing and incentivizing semiconductor companies like Intel or Samsung or Global Foundries to build manufacturing facilities for chips here in the US. So this is a manufacturing play in many ways. Why semiconductors you might ask? Semiconductors are the foundation of modern electronics. Everything from our smartphones to computers to medical devices all need semiconductors. No semiconductors, no tech. So it’s really foundational to the modern society.

More so, you know, it’s not just specific to manufacturing. It’s also creating, as a result of those activities, this huge labor market need for upskilling and reskilling of incumbent workers and the need for new talent to enter the workplaces in the areas receiving these investments.

Now, the science part of the CHIPS and Science Act is also really exciting and underexplored. The science part promotes economic development predicated on advances in ten emerging technology areas that Congress enshrined in the bill. They include semiconductors, but it also includes biotech and AI and quantum science and technology, advanced materials and so on.

So, the same lab-to-market process that made America the home of Silicon Valley and innovations like the internet and GPS and made America the home to Google and Amazon, we now, through CHIPS, want to take that same lab-to-market process and apply it with more intention in the 21st century. That’s what the science part of the CHIPS and Science Act is.

The other exciting thing about this bill is that it’s not just about the federal government and the dollars. States, in many cases, are also chipping in on CHIPS because it’s in their best interest to grow the innovation economy. So for example, in New York, you have them offering a state level companion incentive to the federal CHIPS funds. So CHIPS is unlocking a lot of opportunities on the research side and on the education side for higher ed and workforce development so community colleges, research universities, regional public institutions and all in between have a big role to play.

Van

A few years ago, I was at a meeting of the Council on Competitiveness and many of your major research institutions attend those meetings and they were all excitedly working together and forming consortiums to compete for the CHIPS funds. What is the state of the state in terms of the flow of the funds through all these systems right now?

Shalin

This is a great question. So with the CHIPS part of the CHIPS Act, most of the attention has been placed on the funding at the Department of Commerce in the National Institutes for Standards and Technology, NIST. When we hear Donald Trump, for example, on Joe Rogan’s podcast in the days before the election make a comment, it’s in reference to those funds.

So right now, because there’s a change in administration, the Commerce Department is moving as fast as possible to get all of the CHIPS incentive dollars out the door before the new administration comes in because there is a potential for change in implementation. Needless to say, the Biden administration has a different approach than the Trump administration would — and we can talk about what some of that looks like — but CHIPS dollars are actually much, much more broadly distributed than just the NIST CHIPS incentive fund dollars.

The Economic Development Administration has a competition through the Recompete program and the Tech Hubs program; the Department of Defense has the Microelectronic Commons Hub program; you have the National Science Foundation, which I work with especially closely, which created its first new arm — and the only arm to be named in legislation in over thirty years — as a result of CHIPS.

All of the work of this new directorate is in support of growing the innovation economy in left behind regions. In most cases, the funding from this first tranche of CHIPS is either allocated or grantees have been identified, but there’s a negotiation process that follows between the point of being a selectee for a federal grant and actually receiving it. So that’s where a lot of the NIST funding is tied up, is in this contracting and negotiations, which they’re trying to get done before the new administration takes office. But, there’s a lot of other parts of funding that have already gone out the door and are creating lots of opportunities and challenges in local economies.

Van

Is there anything that our listeners should keep tabs of in terms of the changes in administration?

Shalin

Well, you know, this is the question of the day. There’s been a lot of talk about this because, as I mentioned, for example, Donald Trump called the CHIPS Act into question on Joe Rogan’s podcast, calling it “so bad” and Speaker Mike Johnson, during a campaign visit in New York, was asked if Congress might take steps to unravel CHIPS and he said he was maybe entertaining the idea, then quickly walked it back in a formal statement that said no.

Some in Donald Trump’s orbit, like those associated with the Project 2025 document, have cast a skeptical gaze towards some aspects of CHIPS and Republicans generally historically have not been as focused on industrial policy as levers for growth. But at the moment, most of us in this space think that when push comes to shove, CHIPS will stand. There’s a lot of bipartisan support for it. A lot of the funding has already left communities, including in communities that are in red states and we have a Republican House and Senate.

A lot of the grievances around CHIPS has to do with the implementation strategies around the actual act. So for example, the Biden administration has really emphasized making sure that employers receiving these multi-billion dollar subsidies are thinking about environmental concerns and thinking about DEI provisions and workforce development and thinking about labor union engagement and community benefit agreements. We may see some of that go away in the new administration in terms of implementation.

But the idea of investing in the innovation economy and reshoring manufacturing and building out economic opportunity in left behind regions…that’s something both parties care deeply about and it’s something that was fairly prominent in the election cycle this past go around. I think we should expect CHIPS to continue. But implementation approaches are sure to shift a little bit. And I think the implementation shifts are more expected on the CHIPS side of the bill than the science part of it, and we can talk about what that side looks like too.

Van

Well, thank you for that interpretation, Shalin. It’s good to know how you see it. And if you could for a moment just tie the CHIPS work back into what you explained as your agenda at New America. So how does it fit into your current work?

Shalin

Well, a key objective of the CHIPS and Science Act is to support tech-based economic development to uplift communities that were left behind in the 20th century. When we invested in federally funded research and industrial policies to win the Cold War and the space race and World War II, we didn’t pay much mind to who got to benefit from the fruits of the innovation economy. We were just focused on these strategic objectives. Well, this go around — having learned all we had from the 20th century — 21st century industrial policy has the opportunity to really help those left behind groups outside of Silicon Valley, the Boston corridor, Seattle, San Diego… these traditional tech hubs that we have in the United States. That’s what we’re really here to support, particularly from the workforce labor and education side of things.

I’ll talk about one specific initiative we’re working on to support the implementation of CHIPS. So a little bit of background. The science part of the CHIPS Act, as we covered, created the first new arm at the National Science Foundation in over thirty years called the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships Directorate. For listeners who may not be familiar, the NSF is the nation’s largest federal agency supporting scientific research and STEM education, typically through grant funding. So CHIPS actually expanded the NSF’s mission to not just focus on research funding and STEM education, but also emerging technology development, translating science into technologies and companies and jobs.

That means that the NSF is now focused a lot more around this innovation economy building question. And the entire objective here is to make sure that the entire country is able to come along for the ride and not just the hotspots like Silicon Valley and Boston. So I’d say at least 50 to 60 % of our current work has been focused on that. We’ve studied the new programs they’ve created. We’ve conducted the first public interview with the head of this new arm. We brought the NSF director over to New America to talk about some of this.

At the heart of this expanded mission at NSF, this new technology arm, is something called the Regional Innovation Engines Program and that’s where we’re directly engaged. NSF Engines was named in law, it was named in CHIPS, and it’s carrying out Congress’s vision of growing the innovation economy — these future forward industries predicated on advanced technologies — in parts of the country that missed out in the 20th century.

So NSF Engines brings together regional consortia and provides up to ten years of funding to research universities, industry, community colleges, economic development organizations, you have K through 12, you have labor, you have states, you have a myriad of community organizations banding together to make their region a global leader in an industry cluster that’s focused around emerging technologies.

So you can think about it as the recipients of Engines as having the right ingredients to be a global leader, but Engines is providing the funding and the impetus to actually craft a recipe to bring those ingredients together, hook up technology development and spur job creation and reliable pathways into those jobs. And workforce is key.

So, just to give you a sense of scale of impact here, the White House has said, and I’d venture to agree, that NSF Engines is the greatest and broadest investment in higher ed- based industrial policies since Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act and created land grant universities at the height of the Civil War. So this is a pretty big deal.

Van

That is a big deal.

Shalin

Yeah. So going back to our work in it, you know, we have been really deeply focused on how do we actually operationalize this? How do we realize the promise of this? So one example: in September, New America and NSF formally teamed up and we have launched a capacity building effort for all of the community colleges and NSF engines. It’s called the Accelerator for Community Colleges and the Innovation Economy. So, now we are actually trying to bring workforce development upstream to the point of technology development, which I think is exactly something we talked about during the first podcast visit I had, Van.

We are working with all the ten NSF engines — there’s ten of them in an eighteen state footprint — to support the community college partners with capacity building, to be able to respond to regional economic development needs, to foster the skilled technical workforce in congruence with the tech-based economic development endeavors of Engines. So this is exciting. The ten engines operate in North Dakota, in Utah, in Nevada, in Florida, in Tennessee, South Carolina, Wisconsin. Really, really diverse ecosystems.

They involve all kinds of technology areas ranging from quantum to AI to biotech to textiles innovation and that is where lot of our work is focused. We’re doing technical assistance, we’re doing research, we’re doing local convenings, we’re doing national convenings. And I should say, Van, we just launched a partner network for this effort which includes the Council on Competitiveness and the Association of Community College Trustees and a wide array of membership associations that also convene important doers in these local communities. So we’re excited about that.

Van

Shalin, is that an open process? If there’s any community college administrators or deans listening in, is there a place they can go and look up whether or not there’s a convening in their area?

Shalin

That is a great question. So we have a newsletter at newamerica.org/futureofwork and I would definitely encourage listeners to subscribe. They are also more than welcome to reach out to us if they’re interested in this issue set even broadly. Maybe they’re not part of an Engine. Maybe they never heard of an Engine, but maybe they’re grappling with changing labor market needs. Maybe offshore wind is becoming more of a thing in their community. Maybe they’re thinking about the next evolution around transportation.

We would love to connect with community colleges who are addressing emerging technology workforce development, because this project I mentioned is just one of several that we have cooking. We’re also working with the Economic Development Administration and some other agencies. So, the local convenings haven’t been scheduled yet, but I would welcome folks to reach out, and we’d love to have you involved.

Van

Are there any more tips and hints that you’d like to share out in your work with the CHIS Act?

Shalin

Yeah, absolutely. I think for workforce entities out there, we focus on Department of Education and we focus on Department of Labor. And that’s good. There’s a lot of money there. You have WIOA, you have Perkins, you have Pell. But there’s an entire constellation of funding opportunities, regional innovation ecosystems, and opportunities to align workforce development to economic development.

We’ve done a lot of writing about this — others have as well —  be thinking about new funding pots at NSF. For example, I’m going to use a lot of acronyms here: NSF EPIC is a capacity building grant program for consortias of community colleges and universities who want to work together in new ways around emerging technology workforce needs; NSF Excellent is a pot of funding for work-based learning and apprenticeships around emerging technology areas. Partnership focus as well; you have at the Department of Commerce, the STEM Talent Challenge Grants…that’s an annual awards competition to support workforce development in some of these advanced technology areas.

So I guess one kind of overall tip — and we’ve done a podcast episode with the Association of Community College Trustees on this in particular — there’s a lot of opportunity to get resources to meet local labor market needs, a lot more than we might think at first glance. And that’s a bit of the sense making that our program is trying to do and just bringing to light some of those opportunities. Because it is confusing and the agencies don’t always message right. There’s a lot of capacity building that happens in government when these bills are passed and that’s what I would say: there’s new funding made available from CHIPS and not just the big dollars we hear about in the news. There’s reoccurring pots too.

Van

Well, that is a really good set of tips there. So, broadening out, I’m wondering if you could size up the trajectory of the U.S. innovation economy and the work that’s being done on  21st century industrial policy. How do you size it all up in the next few years compared to other leading economies?

Shalin

So, I think the CHIPS and Science Act, along with the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act, was an incredible boon for the innovation economy. I mean, hey, look, we have to face the music. The US is definitively losing its competitive edge in the innovation economy. We’re not investing in R &D at the rates of other countries. Our higher education system is still, yes, the envy of the world and yet, we don’t allow top STEM talent, to stay here once they study here. Our K through 12 system is really in trouble post-COVID. According to recent data from the National Assessment of Education Progress, about two-thirds of fourth graders in America are not considered proficient readers.

No surprise to your listeners, we have some efficiency problems. There’s a lot we know about how to fund the best science about accelerating technology development, digitization and workforce development, but we don’t do it. CHIPS was a great start and other bills were a great start, but we really need to continue investment.

So one note is that with all of these multi-billion dollar investments, it isn’t the full picture that it could be. In CHIPS, you had programs authorized for amounts a lot larger than Congress actually appropriated, meaning funded. So right now, a big conversation in Washington with the new Congress is ensuring that we secure the appropriations to the authorizations laid out in CHIPS. So NSF’s budget could be higher. We have more funding for the Tech Hubs program, for NSF Engines, for all of these new programs to be unleashed at full force.

You know, the Global Innovation Index takes stock of the pulse of innovation economies around the world. Switzerland is number one, Sweden is number two, and the United States is number three. We’re not doing bad, but we’re losing that leadership stake. Singapore, the UK, China and other countries are catching up. And I should say, the objective is not to beat out all these other countries. It’s to ensure that the standard of living in America continues to go up and that’s not happening anymore. So, that’s why this is an imperative. This is an imperative for national security reasons, yes, but also because the working class people in America are hurting and we really need to renew the middle class. That’s been the North Star of my program anyway.

Van

Well, thank you for the rallying cry. Hey, Shalin, since you are seeing those ten emerging sectors, I’m wondering if there are folks thinking about what they should counsel their nieces, nephews, cousins in terms of future careers. Is there any free advice you could give in terms of career navigation?

Shalin

This is a really complicated question. Maybe I’ll focus on AI. So, we have been doing a lot of research on AI’s impact on the labor market. This has been a personal research area for me well before ChatGPT made AI the end-all be-all everywhere all the time. I would say if you look at the history of technological innovation, what people need to do as individuals doesn’t really ever change. Not when we were moving from candlestick makers to light bulb manufacturing, not when the steam engines came into the fray, not when video killed the radio star.

Focusing on these very concrete workforce development strategies that we know work really well — like apprenticeships, like work-based learning — is still the best hedge against all the headwinds you see against the labor market. Sure, there is a reality in which AI takes over all of our jobs and we become WALL-E in real life, right? That is not likely to happen in our generation. I don’t like to tea leaf read around this because it can be so not tied to the moment, frankly, but that’s the consensus among many AI researchers.

What we can do right now is to pursue high quality education and workforce development in demand program of studies and the modalities to do that. I would point to public higher education as an affordable route. I would point to programs that can demonstrate connectivity to the labor market need and I would really focus on hands-on learning experiences.

We can slice and dice the skills are needed but it’s all a bit moot because it changes so fast and we really overestimate how much employers know what they even want. I mean, people are terrible at writing job descriptions. So we can scrape the internet for skills all we want, but as we know, the underground reality sometimes doesn’t match what you see on job postings anyway.

So I wish I had a more tailored response, Van, but my answer is to look at workforce programs that are tied to employers. Community colleges are a good space. Some universities are a good space for this. And to really invest in hands-on experiences, work-based learning, apprenticeships, internships, work experience. Work is the best preparation for work.

Van

All right, why don’t we close out with this this fun question: you talked about job descriptions. My last use of AI was to have  ChatGPT write a job description for a finance and accounting position for a nonprofit. And boy, it did a really good job. What was your last use of an AI tool? And what were you trying to solve?

Shalin

That is a really good question. So, I was at this conference just the other week and we did something really interesting. We actually asked ChatGPT to ask who should be on the agenda for the next conference and we did it in a plenary session where everyone gets to see it. It was pretty funny. I mean, this was a meeting of a bunch of nerdy researchers, but to see who ChatGPT thought are the leading voices in XYZ area while XYZ folks were in the room was, you know…we had good fun with it.

I was a little tongue in cheek in my response around AI. I say that to maybe give some assurance, but yeah, I mean, these technologies are progressing at a really, really rapid rate. I guess to kind of tie the fun question to the prior question, AI literacy is a very useful skill set. In ten, twenty, thirty, forty years, who knows? But today, it’s a very, very useful skill set and not adequately focused on in education systems.  I’m optimistic about AI and that use case at that conference is one of the reasons why. It’s really getting sharp.

Van

Well, thank you very much, Shalin, for being with us today. We learned so much and thank you for keeping us up to date on all the good works that you’re doing, but also the progress of the country.

Shalin

Thanks very much, Van, and thanks very much for all you do.

Van

Absolutely. I’m Van Ton-Quinlivan with Futuro Health. Thanks for checking out this episode of WorkforceRx. I hope you will join us again as we continue to explore how to create a future-focused workforce in America.