Google's Executive Chairman Dismisses America's Jobs Crisis

Eric Schmidt At Davos Praises Globalization, Dismisses Jobs Crisis

DAVOS, Switzerland -- Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, is clearly tired of modern-day Luddites complaining about the job-destroying forces of technology.

'I assume that everybody here agrees that globalization is wonderful,' he said here Friday, speaking during an afternoon panel at the World Economic Forum -- certainly among the more receptive audiences on the planet for such pronouncements. He was sitting next to Tom Friedman, The New York Times columnist whose best-selling books about globalization often seem to outnumber in-flight magazines in the first-class cabins of intercontinental jets.

'All of that said, Schmidt too blithely dismissed a problem with no easy answers, one at the center of the populist ferment now seething from Cairo to Columbus. In the United States, he suggested, unemployment is predominantly the result of inadequate skills among the workforce, a problem that could be addressed with better education.

'Governments have to do something that's hard,' he said. 'They have to go back and invest in human capital. There are plenty of companies in the U.S. and other countries I've visited that are very short of highly skilled workers.'

More