If companies have stopped hiring and stopped firing, how does anyone new get in the door?
Host Mike Palmer takes a 4:50 AM train to Washington, D.C. for Business Roundtable’s CEO Workforce Forum at the National Geographic Museum of Exploration. He comes back with two ideas that stuck: Sal Khan’s “learning velocity” and Bain & Company CEO Christophe De Vusser’s “human exceptionalism.” Both land in a labor market economists are calling the Great Stay: fewer layoffs, fewer new hires, and more reason than ever to invest in the people you already have.
Mike then sits down with Dane Linn, Senior Vice President at Business Roundtable, who leads the organization’s workforce initiatives for a membership of CEOs from companies like Cisco, Walmart, UPS, General Motors, and Lowe’s. Dane started out as a teacher and elementary school principal, then spent 17 years at the National Governors Association before joining BRT. He explains how BRT CEOs think about expanding access to careers, building skills, and helping workers advance, and he makes the case for evidence over “best practices.” His words: best practices are for amateurs.
Then, a first for the show: Mike brings in Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, as a live voice co-host for a deep dive into BRT’s new report, Developing Talent, Delivering Results. Listeners may remember our AI co-host experiments with Nancy back in the day. This time it’s less novelty and more research partner. Claude brings the numbers, flags where the evidence is thin, and adds detail where it helps.
The conversation digs into several threads:
- The scale: BRT member companies create 650,000+ internships, apprenticeships, and co-ops a year, roughly 1 in 7 nationwide, and more than 100,000 of those participants become full-time employees.
- The portable premium: Former interns out-earn peers by 6–8% a decade later (about $77,000 cumulatively), even when they don’t get hired where they interned.
- The supply gap: Employer demand for interns is at a five-year high, yet only 37% of college seniors have completed a paid internship.
- Beyond “Johnny One Note”: Dane’s case for a full continuum of work-based learning, from career days and micro-internships to apprenticeships and rotational programs.
- Proof points: EY and Alamo Colleges in San Antonio, where 95% of completers landed accounting roles at roughly $70,000 a year, and Accenture’s AI fundamentals training for nearly 600,000 people.
- The AI paradox: AI is pushing more judgment into entry-level work, yet employers still rank AI literacy last in what they screen for.
- The policy picture: US apprentices make up about 0.3% of the workforce, compared with roughly 4% in Germany, Australia, and England. Plus Workforce Pell, WIOA, and what a new Congress could mean for bipartisan workforce investment.
- Reading the fine print: Why some of the wage premium may reflect who big companies hire, and why outcomes measurement matters.
Resources Mentioned:
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Palmer Media 2026-11-12 10:00:00
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