One of the privileges of attending Davos is the opportunity to engage with the best informed human beings on the planet. When it comes to employment, recruitment and the world of work, they don't come with greater knowledge – or power – than CEO of R70bn Manpower Group Jeffrey Joerres. As you'll see in this interview we had for CNBC Africa, or by reading the transcript, I took full advantage of the chat. What came through was a rational but still disturbing picture of the unemployment dilemma. As technology replaces people in areas which used to provide lots of jobs, a radical rethink is required. This is not the time to daw grand industrialisation plans founded on paradigms being laid to waste. There is no silver bullet. But getting to some solution starts with properly understanding the problem. Fascinating, important insights. – AH .To watch the interview on CNBC click here .ALEC HOGG: This is a fabulous day in Davos. We were told by a usually reliable weatherperson that it was going to be cloudy, gloomy, and grey but perhaps a reflection of the way the world economy is starting to look a little bit better, we have good sunshine today. We have one of the stars with us today. Jeffrey Joerres is the Chief Executive of ManPower, a big international group. He's been referred to as the most powerful person in the recruitment field in the world. I'm not sure. I guess modesty will stop him from agreeing with that. Jeffrey, you've had quite a few Davos' and in fact involvement with the World Economic Forum..JEFFREY JOERRES: Right, not only here in Davos, but also on a regional basis. I've been able to co-chair the Indian one. I've also been associated with the B20 in the World Economic Forum, so it has been a great platform for us to get the word out and really get some awareness about training, education, development, unemployment, and youth unemployment – lots of major issues right now..ALEC HOGG: Yes, I've spent this morning – being of course, Davos Day One – listening to some of the updated views on what's happening in the world of employment, and it doesn't look terribly good.JEFFREY JOERRES: No, it's quite difficult. In fact, when you look at it you can say 'wow, aren't we getting better GDP? Aren't we starting to get a little bit more kind of enthusiasm?' Yet the labour market seems to be lagging, and I would sense that it would lag. It's not going to be anticipatory hiring as we've seen before. Companies are going to hold back until they see sustained demand. When they see sustained demand, they'll start to feel a little bit more confident and bring that hiring in..ALEC HOGG: Now this is your business. You do this for a living. You think, eat, sleep, and drink about it. I haven't heard anyone give a cohesive insight into how the world is going to start absorbing new people into the market. Do you have any thoughts?.JEFFREY JOERRES: It is difficult. When you hear about job creation, many times I get a little bit frustrated because you don't just create a job out of thin air. It's based on the demand side. What we need to do is make sure that where the jobs are being created – which is 60/65 percent of the jobs are in small/medium sized businesses. What we need to be able to do is to free up those businesses for the invention of businesses for the innovation. We need it more than ever before because today's innovation does not drag as long, as much employment. When you built the railroad, thousands of people were employed. Now, Instagram sold for billions of dollars and had 13 employees..ALEC HOGG: One of the people that I listened to this morning likened it to the period when the motor vehicle replaced the horse, and human beings being replaced increasingly, by machines. Are we going to become like horses?.JEFFREY JOERRES: I'm not sure. There's the old joke about the future of the labour market as a man and a dog. The man is there to feed the dog, and the dog is there to stop the man from touching the machine and in fact, that's not what's going to happen. What we are going to see, whether it be agriculture, manufacturing, or value-added manufacturing services, the jobs are going to be there. They're going to require more education, more diligence, and more of them because of the efficiency and productivity that now comes along with companies..ALEC HOGG: We have a serious issue in South Africa at the moment. We have a policy, which is promoting manufacturing, but everything I'm hearing is that manufacturing as it used to be is not going to be the same as in the future. It's no panacea for job creation..JEFFREY JOERRES: It's not a panacea in the old paradigm, but it is still some of the best jobs – it's just that there are fewer. You're not going to find 1000 people in a factory, putting tops on bottoms making a great wage. What you are going to find is smaller amounts of people, higher skilled and still making very good wages. Manufacturing is still a powerful part of the labour economy. It just won't feed, through inefficiency, the massive amounts of jobs that it did for the last 40 years..ALEC HOGG: As an idea, what percentage would new manufacturing be creating relative to what might have happened in the past?.JEFFREY JOERRES: It really depends. If you're looking at assembly and hard goods, you're probably looking at ten percent. Where you had 100 people, you now need ten. Where you had 1000 you now need 100, so you need more of that innovation and more of those small mid-sized companies to keep up. The fact is, we're going to have a difficult time because of just that fear factor until we make it through this kind of new revolution that we're going through..ALEC HOGG: Education, as well…I heard it being said here in Davos that we still have an education system around the world that was designed for the agricultural age. We're now in th second machine age..JEFFREY JOERRES: No doubt, education needs to be much more iterative also, which follows with that. It's not as episodic…I go to school for nine months and then I take off. I go to school for four years and get a university degree. There has to be more back and forth, because business is moving faster and they need the skill quickly, as opposed to waiting four years and then saying, 'I don't need to have education anymore for the rest of my life'. All of the paradigms are changing. We're feeling the struggle and the labour market is really the one that's getting the brunt of all of this right now..ALEC HOGG: Jeffrey, I'm going to make you President of South Africa for the next two minutes – unofficially, of course – to give you that power in a country, which has a 25 percent unemployment rate. What would you do? What would you implement?.JEFFREY JOERRES: I would focus on nothing on the short term, even though that feels good. Government can do a major part of training and education, and then be open for business. That's how you create jobs. When you create jobs with the willingness of people who have lifelong learning skills – and skills – you have a better sustainable future..ALEC HOGG: So we're going to have a tough time for a while longer..JEFFREY JOERRES: Yes. We're going through a change. We're going through a human age that says this is all about how the human will adjust to all this technology, and with that, it's not going to come easy. It's an S-curve. We're going to have to make a little bit of a drop before we get up on the next climb..ALEC HOGG: And the next climb – last climb – was created by many entrepreneurs, many of whom when bust, but you had the likes of Henry Ford. Is that going to be similar?.JEFFREY JOERRES: It is, but it's going to be on a whole different scale. It's not going to be so much in the hard goods area. It's going to be in the service area, and the service area doesn't create as many jobs or if they do, the entry-level jobs are much more entry-level. That will be the challenge..ALEC HOGG: What are you telling your children or your friends' children to do? What fields should they be looking at?.JEFFREY JOERRES: No doubt, the most employable fields are those with technical skills that allow you to have problem-solving capability – lifelong problem solving. I tell my kids 'you are competing against the world, not your classmates, and not the ones down the street, so if you think you're good, you're not. It is a highly competitive world out there and you have to be able to solve problems and be agile'..ALEC HOGG: But then if you're Swiss, where you page five times as much for a cup of coffee as you do home in South Africa – because you earn five times as much – if you're competing against the world it doesn't look like a very bright place..JEFFREY JOERRES: It is, if you can manufacture that ecosystem. What the Swiss have been able to do in a unique way, is to keep the ecosystem in the middle of all of this craziness, and they've been able to maintain it However, if you're going to go into the big import/export marketplace…now you're in a whole different arena..ALEC HOGG: Jeffrey Joerres, the Chief Executive of ManPower.
