Pete end up being able to live farther away from their James. And remote work, therefore, means that how a local labor market is doing might end up having less do with how the local housing market is doing or how the local commercial real estate market is doing than in the past. Hi, James. Great to have you on the podcast today. Pete, great to talk to you again. It's been a few years. So where are you today? This very moment, I am at home in San Francisco.
I'm now the chief economist at Indeed, the job search site, were headquartered in Austin, but I still live in San Francisco. Go. And during the pandemic, I have stayed put in my place in San Francisco right in the mission, you know, despite the smoke, you know, it's the mission's been actually a great place during the pandemic.
There are enough things open for takeout and delivery that there are still people on the street, and so life feels maybe a little bit closer to normal than it might in other places. I'm in SF too and certainly different, but help me visualize. Like, what I like for kind of folks listening. So, you know, maybe downtown or kind of where you are, like, what's different about the the city today than perhaps a year ago. So my immediate neighborhood is around the 16th admission art station.
There are definitely fewer people on the street. Lots of retail is closed, not as much as boarded up. There was that period late March, in April, there were lots of stores actually boarded up. Very few are now boarded up and that makes it feel a little bit more like normal, still some outdoor diming until this current set of rules came in. And so fairly lively in terms of, like, seeing people on the street most times a day. Yeah. I think things are quieter, but silly eerie, but familiar.
So do you say that you were the current chief economist at Indeed. And then we got to know each other over a couple of years working together where you were the chief Centralia. And so you have this really unique vantage point of studying deeply kind of housing markets and the real estate market well as understanding labor market.
And so this is just a kind of crazy, crazy time, a crazy year, and hopefully this will be a fascinating conversation around kind of the combination of 2 and the relationship between labor and real estate. So, you know, here we are, you know, this is the season of 2021 predictions, like after crazy 2020. Like, what are you seeing in the economy right now? Take us through your kind of economic view of what you're seeing in the economy.
Well, in the economy right now, we can start with some good news. And that is the economy, at least in the US, is in better shape right now than almost everybody predicted back in the middle of the year. Unemployment is much lower. Lots of sectors have rebounded in a way that wasn't obvious. It's gonna look like this in May or June. So we're doing much better right now than some of those worst predictions on the economic side.
Obviously, we're doing worse right now than we ever could have imagined in terms of new cases and from the virus.
At the same time, the economic picture isn't quite as good right now as it looks, and that's because A lot of the rebound, a lot of the improvement has been the easier James, places that have shut down reopening businesses that could bounce quickly doing so, but there's a growing amount of longer term chronic damage that's been building Pete who are permanently unemployed rather than temporarily laid off.
People who have now been permanently unemployed for more than 6 months and are about to lose benefits. And there's also been job losses in some of the sectors that weren't as directly affected by the pandemic. So when you look at the kinds of sectors where people can work from home, like tech and finance, there have been job losses almost as steep as in the from 2008, 2009, 2010. Obviously, not as much damage as in hospitality and tourism, but a lot of damage by historical standards.
And so just as you think about, you obviously Pete deeply involved in real estate industry during the global financial crisis, and then obviously it's tech experience, I think, and kind of back in 2000 error. Like, what's different? What is different about today versus the previous recessions? One thing that's different is how sudden this was.
You know, when you look at the job losses, and businesses that shut down, what took, you know, many months to build during the Great Recession happened close to overnight on this past year, and so the suddenness, the fact that it was really, you know, this pandemic hurt services industries, the types of sectors that tend to be more resilient, you know, the great recession was center on housing and construction, which, you know, tend to be more volatile industries generally.
You know, the world of real estate is much more accustomed to booms and busts than retail or restaurants or arts and entertainment are. And so it was a different mix of industries affected this time. And also so much of the difference was how much of that pain is likely to be temporary, and that's good news.
The share of unemployment that is temporary layoffs of was almost 80% this past April, normally including during the Great Recession, temporary unemployment is only about 10 to 15 percent of the overall unemployment rate.
And so you have this intense but hopefully brief period where lots of jobs were lost, lots of people are out of work, and that means that that kind of public policy that we have needed during this pandemic has been relief to bridge both people and businesses during this period rather than ongoing stimulus as we did back in 2009 to fundamentally restart the economy. And so just, you know, thinking through, you mentioned here kind of like the temporary and impact.
What are some other examples of temporary pain or short term damage? And just like what is coming back you know, I think so much has happened over the last 9 months. What's been surprisingly fast to come back? The best examples of sectors have rebounded are certain kinds of services that had to shut down, but as soon as they opened, people wanted to catch up for what they hadn't been able to use. I think the best examples are a hair salon, beauty shop, barbershops, and dentist offices.
There was a while when people couldn't get their haircut, And now those businesses are booming as people are essentially catching up from all the hair appointments and teeth cleaning that they couldn't get for a period of So our site, indeed, we actually see job postings in those sectors above where they were a year ago. So not only rebounded, but more than back to normal.
And, you know, if I guess from an economist perspective, this is we're performing are the series of amazing experiments right now. And, obviously, some of them are kind of, like, temporary, but some of them are like to be permanent. You know, what do you anticipate in terms of some of the more permanent changes to our society, to the way the labor markets work, to the way that people work, how do you think things will evolve over the next several years?
So I think we can think about 3 different kinds of longer term shifts. 1 is a more macroeconomic shift Flint that we are even with this recovery, it will be a long time before we get back to that 3 a half percent unemployment where we were back in February, the pandemic started. That means that, you know, with a higher level of unemployment, you know, probably for some years to come, the labor market is not as tight. It won't be as hard for employers to find workers.
Wages might not rise as fast. You might see wider inequality because one of the things that happens when unemployment's really low in labor Morgan type is that employers look beyond their traditional workforces and you basically become more open minded, who they might hire. I think that's the first trend that it's likely to persist. I think a second trend that we really don't know what's gonna happen. Future is about consumer spending patterns.
So this year, there's huge shift away from services toward goods. People buying exercise equipment instead of paying for their gym memberships. People buying instant pots and other cooking equipment rather than eating in restaurants, it's unclear Beller people have developed new habits that they wanna keep. There may be some people who will wanna keep cooking. There some people who will never wanna turn the stove on again.
And so I think there's a lot of uncertainty longer term about whether we've seen permanent shift in spending patterns I think this is especially relevant for housing because a lot of those shifts are about investing in one's home, essentially in sourcing lots of kinds of services to do yourself with physical stuff you might buy as opposed to going out and spending on services for other people to do it. And then the 3rd shift is about how we work.
And this is probably the shift that's the safest bet we'll continue, and that is more of us will be working remotely once the pandemic is over than we did before the pandemic started. Of course, not as much as at the height of the pandemic this year, but I still think there will be permanent increase in people working remotely or going into the office less Morgan, and that has big implications both for residential and for commercial real estate.
I think remote work for certainly in Silicon Valley. That's a huge question on people's mind. So maybe let's talk a little bit about kind of remote work and maybe before we do that, help us understand the kind of relation between labor markets and real estate markets. And is there some sort of expression between the 2 or kind of, you know, visualization? What's the fundamental economic relationship between those two marketplaces?
The fundamental relationship is that generally speaking, people live in work in the same metropolitan area and metropolitan areas are basically defined by commuting Pete. And it's very rare, at least traditionally, that somebody might live in a different metropolitan area than where they were. Because that's too far to commute.
And so housing demand depends very much on how the local economy is doing, more jobs and more income in those James, mean Pete have more spending power and they consume more housing.
Sometimes there are certain kinds of jobs when they boom, people might wanna live very close to work I think part of the boom in residential living in many urban neighborhoods that we saw over the past decade had to do with people wanting to know, have a shorter commute to work and wanting to be able to take transit or cycle or even walk to their job.
Remote work really changes that relationship remote work means that people end up being able to live farther away from their jobs if they're only going in once a week or once a month, or basically never to their office rather than every day. And remote work therefore means that how a local labor market is doing might end up having less to do with how the local housing market is doing or how the local commercial real estate market is doing that in the past.
Yeah. It's sort of incredible unbundling of those 2 marketplaces together. And it's, you know, you bring up something interesting. I think because we've been sort of deep in sort of confinement this year, that seems like a binary option between remote work, and in office work.
And I think you kind of allude to some sort of hybrid version there just to sort of, I guess, in terms of you thinking about this from a labor perspective, There's an unbundling in some respect, but it's not a complete unbundling in terms of people are thinking about, you know, some sort of hybrid option in between. How do you think that might play out? Absolutely. Definitely not binary. First of all, maybe only a little more than a third of jobs can be done from home in the first place.
Tech jobs can finance jobs can other professional jobs can, but, you know, almost 2 thirds Pete in the US work in jobs that really can't be done from home. So already we're talking about a minority of the workforce.
It's a better paid and more highly educated part of the workforce, but it's still a minority than within that, some people might work permanently remotely, but more likely as people will be going into the office once a week, maybe every other week, which means they're still commuting. They might be able to manage a occasional 2 hour commute rather than wanting to be within half an hour where they work.
And could therefore see people moving farther away from downtowns, but still within the same larger labor Morgan. You know, I think relatively few people will actually be in a position and wanting to move entirely out of the labor market or metropolitan area where they are now to the mountain top or the island or wherever the sort of fantasy place to live is. So, I mean, that's, you know, potentially a big change. Does this mean the death of cities as we know it?
I don't think it means the death of cities at all. I think we are likely, see some changes in real estate prices where there are lots of urban neighborhoods. There could be lower demand at least initially, but That doesn't mean that housing disappears. It means that housing might become more affordable, and therefore, the reasons that people choose in cities and in dense neighborhood changes.
You know, it's less about minimizing a commute to work and maybe more about wanting to live in cities for consumption rather than production for lifestyle and entertainment, rather than just because that's where your job is.
In some ways, this could make cities much better if you have more people who are living in cities because they want to be in the city personal reasons rather than just that's where their job is, but it still probably means decline in real estate values as part of that transition I imagine declining real estate values within cities, but in the sort of, you know, the suburbs, then I think there's been a kind of appreciation in some respects. Of those values.
And in terms of you talk about that, the change of the cities, like, just from a sort of purchase versus rental, do you see that evolving? So rapidly, or people in their twenties are kind of like doing 1 month here, 1 month here, Airbnb seems to be booming. Like, what is the sort of makeup of the housing stock change? Well, I think there are 2 things that are going on at the same time.
One is that there are probably people taking advantage of this moment to accelerate some housing decisions they would have made anyway. So buying their first home, moving to good public school district There may be people who plan to do that 2 or 5 years from now and are moving that up in this period because they want more space during the pandemic.
But I think the other trend is people perhaps checking out places to James a look before thinking about temporary moves that are largely gonna be rentals. Partly out of experimentation, but also in the pandemic, people are less likely to take risks.
You know, there's been so much change this year and so much uncertainty about what happens afterward, uncertainty about whether your job will be there, whether your job will let you more remotely, that some people might be much less likely to buy a new place rather than to rent until there's much more certainty in the world. There's a lot of kind of speculation in the media and on Twitter in Silicon Valley around how this would change San Francisco in particular.
And, you know, you talk about this sort of a third of jobs that can be remote, you know, one with think I'm sure it's the case in San Francisco, that number is higher, and you've got a lot more sort of, perhaps, tech companies that are sort of comfortable with remote work, sort of interfaces, lot more developers. Just like, is this the end of Silicon Valley in terms of should we all be moving to Miami and starting our tech companies there? And how do you see it playing out for San Francisco?
When we think about who or what might leave San Francisco in the Bay Area. I think it depends a lot on what stage people and companies are at. For people who are in a job that they're likely to be in for a long time.
People who already have really strong professional networks that can therefore be maintained virtually people who already have funding, those are the types of people or their companies that might find it easier to move, but places like San Francisco still have huge advantages for people who are still building out their personal networks or who are still looking for funding or who are looking to take risks I think there's a big difference between
people who are able to move, settled, they don't need as much in person interaction as people who are starting out or earlier in their path. Virtual communication is much better at maintaining relationships than building new ones onboarding becomes much more difficult to do remotely than maintaining work relationship with coworkers that you already have.
And so I think there are some functions and some people who will find it easier to leave the Bay Area or leave Seattle or leave New York and other clusters, whereas other people will find that they wanna stay connected geographically to those clusters.
People think about leaving not only if their current job lets them, but also if their future job search might also be remote, but for someone who can work remotely in their current job, but might wanna be on the job market again in the next year or 2 and might the looking at jobs that aren't remote, those people are a lot less likely to leave the bay area and move across the country.
Yeah. It's, you know, and effects, we have big students of network effects and We've certainly seen both the sort of network effects of the physical talent that is, you know, I think surprising or surprisingly not persistent within Silicon Valley because it the real value in that network, plus the cultural differences as well, which, you know, is fundamental to helping companies succeed. Imagine that cultural aspects are much harder to transfer into different new ecosystems to develop startups.
That's right. And those network effects matter much more for some kinds of people, some kinds of roles, some kind companies then for others. Yeah. And it's particularly in the early growth stage where you're trying to recruit talent, trying to build connections at, you know, in steady state, it you could see how it might make sense to transition. Let's talk a little bit about the surrounding city infrastructure and the whole ecosystem.
You know, this shift from kind of largely in office work environment to potentially a kind of meaningful portion of people working remotely. What does that do to our offices What's that due to our co working spaces, the retail?
Like, help us kinda think through what's that gonna look like over the next year, assuming that there's gonna be a portion of people that are gonna like this remote work, which I think many people do, and company is gonna sort of accept them that they'll work some sort of hybrid model in the near future.
Yeah. So for the companies and people who are able to work remotely either all or most of the time, first of all, I mean, it creates a big questions for the demand for commercial real estate in a world where you have, you know, people coming in 1 or 2 days a week. For an organization, there's obviously a tension between trying to, therefore, reduce real estate costs, which works if your staff are all coming in on different days.
But at the same time, for productivity, you would want everyone to be coordinated in coming in that same 1 or 2 days. So you're in office time is more coordinated and more intentional. It's hard to have that both ways to cut way back on your commercial office space and make it possible to bring everybody together regularly. One thing I expect could see at least for some companies is that commercial real estate, you know, takes a few steps toward being internal conference space.
Space that's designed to bring people together intentionally as opposed to for when people come in for solitary work. That could mean fewer desks, more conference rooms, more flexible spaces, and so on. It could also mean other services if more of the time people spend in the office is people actually traveling longer distances to work, maybe even staying overnight for part of a week as opposed to daily commute.
And so I think that puts pressure on and potentially opens up new models for different kinds of configurations and sharing, but, you know, at all of this so much depends on the details of remote work. It's really different if someone is working 90% of the time remote and coming in, you know, once every other week as opposed to someone who's working 99% remote and can live anywhere and is only coming in for an off-site once order and needing to stay overnight.
Those two scenarios have hugely different implications for where people might live and what the office space might look like. But I think with, I mean, the fundamental expectation is there's gonna be a meaningful reduction in required office space and a reformatting of existing office space. And then the downstream implications for that are gonna be, you know, reductions in transportation systems and retail and kind of all that.
And, clearly, that's gonna create a lot of distress, but, you know, as builders of startups, that also presents a bunch of opportunity I'm curious as you think about one of the patterns that we've observed is just how these market dislocations create incredible opportunities. And if, often, if they're unlocked, this technology which unlocks them.
So, you know, in the case of 10 years ago, ish Airbnb was hoping kind of people make extra money and the technology enabled them to more effectively utilize spare space, Uber And Lyft Beller to kinda unlock value in cars and transportation, sort of building another set supply. For that, do you see a world where there's gonna be some of this vacant space being repurposed, retransformed? And if so, is that feasible in the knitter?
I think it will be both opportunity and pressure for some of that reconfiguration. It may be converting some commercial space to being more hotel like space for employees to stay overnight if their visits to the office are longer trips rather than daily commutes. But I think even more than transfers of commercial real estate is that we may be in for the need to transform transportation, especially if public transit ends up in a downward spiral.
Of course, so much of that depends on federal government funding or mass transit, but some of the most productive cities are highly dependent on infrastructure heavy mass transit systems. And I think there's a real risk that we get into a spiral where people are using mass transit less their finances suffer.
Services continue to get cut back, which causes more people to look alternatives to mass transit, leaving mass transit to be more infrequent and less useful for people at least those who can afford alternatives. And I don't see how that cycle is. Maybe it's a little bit premature, but do you see that? I mean, clearly there's a lot of emerging technologies around transportation.
You know, whether that's self driving, you think that will be just disconnected between the people that need it, I imagine, that perhaps rich people with their Beller versus the people that use the public trans system. It's unlikely to solve the problem in the near term. That's right. I think there'll be huge inequalities in terms of transportation access and then the ability to manage with less transit service.
So, Jed, generally speaking, you know, as you think about these sort of tectonic shifts in real estate, and in labor. You know, I'm curious if you see many opportunities opening up for new starters. Many of the audience start up founders or executives and just when there's dislocation that presents opportunity. How would you think of that from an economic perspective?
So first of all, I think there are likely the opportunities around technology that can communication of ways in which remote communication can continue to get better. You know, we're at a point where lots of people have now been working remotely and discovered that in many ways, it's better than they expected. People are investing and still want to invest in the remote work setup.
Some of that is physical stuff, like Beller cameras and lights and desks, but there's also probably a lot of room still for innovation about how to make virtual conferences approach some of the advantages that real in person conferences have, ways to improve team meetings, document sharing. So I think there's a whole set of upper of these around making remote work better and more efficient.
There are certainly gonna be opportunities, I think, around how to sort of share commercial real estate Beller, you know, everything from how to schedule rotating or shared use of space. To, you know, much more flexible tools for finding and renting commercial space, including event space. I think there'll be very strong demand for ways for companies to bring people together who are working remotely in much more intense ways than in the past.
I mean, you know, I think many of us has been in a world where, yes, we go, you know, travel to headquarters and visit other offices in a sort of ad hoc way. Sometimes the people you wanna see are in the office, sometimes they're traveling. But I think a lot of companies will be shifting to a world where many people are working remotely, but when they come together, it is very intentional and very coordinated, and that time becomes that much more precious.
And so any way to make those times, even more productive and efficient and engaging for James. I think that creates a lot of opportunities. And then the transportation Pete. This question of how you get people from near and far into dense downtowns if mass transit, isn't it the level of what it used to be? And I think that's probably the most challenging question, the longer term. You know, this not necessarily something entirely on the private sector to fix.
Certainly, some of that is on the public sector to fund, but there are lots of models of transportation from around the world that, you know, are a mix of public and private. So there could be huge long term opportunities for figuring that out. Really interesting. It's a great startup for the entrepreneurs out there. So you recently published the indeed 2020 labor market review, which is, you know, a great read and fascinating.
I'm curious, like, any feedback you're getting from that and you know, in addition, just maybe our consumers changing the way that they're searching for jobs, there's probably some big changes in the way that consumers are searching for employment opportunities. Yeah. There are lots of Pete, of course, who are unemployed farm when we work before the pandemic.
One of the ways in which jobs are to changed is there are more people who are very eager at work because they're unemployed than maybe on the verge of losing their health insurance since that's so tied to employment in the US. At the same time, you know, downturn, lots of people are less likely to search Morgan new job if they've already got a good one. You know, this is, for many people, not the time to be the last person hired at a new company. There's you know, risk of a second downturn.
And so there are probably more people searching desperately and fewer people searching sort of casually or up domestically. I think the other thing that's been really striking this year in terms of job search is more and more people want to work remotely, but the real boom in labor demand has been for in person jobs that support the stay at home economy. So warehouse jobs, driving jobs, construction jobs, know, these are all jobs, you know, that can't be done from home.
And so, you know, a real boom and job opportunities has been jobs that support the stay at home economy, which are not jobs that can be done from home. You could see a big change there in terms of demand. You know, if we take a step back in terms of April this year, you know, labor economists and sort of and macro economists had a view of the world that is quite different than where we are today. What did economists get wrong about the state of things and that forecast just 9 months ago?
Well, I think there were some hugely important factors that were simply unknown know, above all, what the path of the virus would look like, how it spread, how possible it would be to open up certain businesses without introducing lots of new health risks. I mean, I think one surprise on the upside is, you know, how much we learned about treating COVID and even demographics aside that fatality rates are more favorable now than they were at that worst moment in late March April.
So I think that's one thing that, like, was unknowable then. I think though that something that was a bit of a head fake was that so much of the unemployment was temporary. You know, and the unemployment spiked to almost 15%, which was you know, essentially the highest is the great depression, the big difference that really made that number unlike other periods of high unemployment.
Is that almost 80% of people said that their unemployment was likely to be temporary, and the headline number doesn't make that distinction. You've gotta go 1 or 2 levels down to understand that an unemployment rate of 15% isn't like an unemployment rate of 15% the last time we saw it in the 19 thirties. And so I think, you know, just the nature of this recession being so different naturally led people to interpret a lot of the headlines differently.
And what do you think about looking for as a 2021? What do you think of some of the things that people are getting wrong or might be getting wrong around forecasting what's gonna happen in the next year? So one thing that people might get wrong is around goods versus services. And the extent to which patterns that have changed this year will persist. You know, it could be that the stuff people bought a lot of this year, they'll continue to buy.
It could be that people will continue to want larger James, do lots of home improvements, but we could be in for a bounce back and maybe a bounce back that even overshoots in the other direction, although home improvement projects people have done this year might just be that they pulled forward the next 5 years of plan home improvements. To this year, and they don't need to do them, then next year and beyond.
You know, maybe that there is such a strong demand for travel in the second half of next year once it becomes possible because people are catching up on all the destination weddings and birthday parties and conferences and everything else that got canceled. You know, we're not going to have 2 whole years travel all packed into the second half of twenty twenty one, but there will probably be more than 6 months of travel demand. In that 6 month period.
So we could actually be in this period where we get into capacity constraints that demand for travel and cow rooms and restaurants and other services bounce back much more quickly than supply can, you know, if it takes time to bring planes back online and to Pete trading pilots with certifications of lapse and so on. So we could be in for an unexpected set of supply constraints or at least much higher prices. As everyone's trying to hold their events the same month next fall.
What you're describing sounds a bit like the roaring twenties. Do you think we're in for the roaring 20s and they sort of snap back into this luxury goods decadence and maybe not decadence, but with our very high savings rate in the economy right now, there's, like, there's segments of the population, there's excess cash that could be put to work there. I think that depends so much on how quickly we get to widespread vaccination and the virus really being under control.
We could still be in for a lot of economic damage if the virus is with us, you know, longer into next year than we expect. And, also, if there's not some kind of relief that helps both struggling households and struggling businesses make it until the virus is under control.
We could be in for a period where more restaurants go under more James and retailers and other personal services go under which not only of course hurts the owners and customers of those businesses, but, you know, again, creates another sort of supply constraint once, you know, there's a huge jump in demand for all those services. So we talked a lot about cities and labor. Just take a step forward, and I know you're economists.
So I won't ask you to bet your career on it or reputation, but just a little like let's just future gaze for a minute and think about cities in 2030 years time. What are the three things you think that will be the most different from where we are today. And then what are the three things you think might just be the same? So I think 20 to 30 years time, the things that might be the most similar to today is the value on things that are face to face and things that are in person.
I think, you know, there are pretty basic human needs about wanting to work, socialize in person. You know, cities have long been not only labor markets, but also dating in marriage markets where, you know, some of that moves online, but and so often is the case as technology advances that online experiences end up reinforcing and complementing real world experiences rather than substituting.
So that kind of demand along with all the challenges of how to manage density, I think we'll still be with us. I think some of the biggest differences might be around why people choose to pay the premium to live in cities and denser neighborhoods. It may be less about proximity to jobs and professional opportunities and more about proximity to entertainment, people, and social opportunity That's a trend that's been underway.
Increasingly, cities have become places for consumption, not just places for production. And I think that's, change that continues. I think the biggest change though for cities is whether some cities become unlivable because of climate change and other environmental shifts.
Places that are near or below sea level that are at risk of floods or hurricanes or wildfires and smoke may become much less livable putting pressure on other cities that face fewer of those stresses So we could, you know, from 20 or 30 years out, see very big shifts from cities at risk from climate change to cities less at risk. Pandemic plus climate change. There's a really formidable depressing, but hopefully we'll have some technology and startups Beller to solve some of those problems.
You've had this very unique vantage point being a chief economist and, you know, access to huge amounts of data. I'm curious from seeing the role in analytics in data of all over the last decade or so. What advice would you give early stage founders out there and kinda how to think about the opportunities and challenges with data within their startups.
So I think the first piece of advice is that everyone in organizations working closely with data know that there are much bigger problems and challenges with those data that everyone else in those organizations who aren't working against directly with data.
There's, you know, Morgan, the gap between what people in other parts of a business and certainly people on the outside think is possible and doable with data than what the data engineers and data scientists, actually know about the challenges of using data. And I think a lot of that needs to be handled early on making smart decisions and investing in data infrastructure, data documentation, at the beginning, rather than later on.
I've never seen or heard of an organization that wishes they had waited longer to set up now proper data infrastructure and data governance. And I think one area that makes a huge difference in how much organization benefits from its data is Beller data are organized in a way that's compatible with external norms, whether that's using standard geographies, or using standard formats using standard tools.
There are lots of directions in which it's possible for data infrastructure to be more compatible with how the rest of the world works rather than less compatible. The more compatible data are, the more other data sources they can be combined with the more you're likely to be able to find data scientists and data engineers who already have the skills you need on the outside.
Know, I think those are the ways in which companies, you know, large and small can get much more out of the data that they have. Yeah. That's really interesting. We see that time and time again like building access to the data and storing the data, but then it's a good call out. Make that kind of data usable by kind of using the tools, the technology, the formats, just having the data. It's, you know, sometimes just too unworldly and too unmanageable to get the insights from it.
Jed, thank you for your time today. Was just a terrific and fascinating conversation. We'll pleasure to connect again and, like, hear your insights on labor and real estate. Thanks for joining us today. Thanks, Pete. Great to join you today. You've been listening to the NFX podcast. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts, and you can describe to the NFX podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.
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