FROM THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Congratulations!  Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today on this important occasion.  I’ve had a long and personal connection with Virginia Commonwealth University, so it’s a special pleasure to see so many successful graduates here at VCU.

Thank you, President Trani, for bestowing this honorary degree upon me.  Gene, you’ve done so much for this University, as a visionary and a builder.  You’ve done a lot for this campus.

This is a great institution in so many ways.  A strong business school, one of the best art programs in the country, a leading biotechnology research center, a new engineering school, and my favorite, one of the top tennis teams around.  And there’s so much more.  VCU is a wonderful place – and I’m not just saying that because my own son goes here. 

So first of all, my heartiest congratulations to you the graduates.  I understand one thing very clearly; a commencement speech is the last thing to stand between you and your degree, so I know my duty well.   At some commencements, speakers go on and on like wind blowing through a desert.   Some of my own graduations went like that, bringing to mind the comment of a forlorn speaker who apparently went on too long.  He said, “I don’t mind people looking at their watches when I’m speaking, but I do take exception when they start shaking their watches to make sure they still work.”  

This is a great day for you the graduates, your friends, parents and loved ones.  But I’ll bet there’s at least one question on many of your minds today.  No, not “who’s the old guy with the bushy eyebrows?”  You’re wondering about jobs, and what the future holds for you – will I be able to find a good job?  That’s natural.  It was the question on my mind when I graduated.  It should be on your mind today, and it’s on my mind as well.

The basic question is, where do jobs come from?  One thing we know for sure is that education plays a big role. 

You know jobs and education are closely linked.  Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.  Many of you are continuing education graduates – you’ve been out in the workforce before, maybe a few times.  You know it takes education to understand your opportunities, to create opportunities, and to exploit them.

Living in the United States, you live in the most dynamic, innovative, economy in the world.  We’re at the forefront of every industry and every technology.  Change is always in the air.  The workplace is ever changing, with some industries losing jobs, and others creating jobs.  Over time, there’s always more of the latter than the former, but to grab hold of the wave, you need education – you need to be prepared for the opportunities.  That’s what a good education does for you.

And it isn’t just the knowledge you take with you.  That’s perishable.  Knowledge or skills quickly become obsolete unless constantly upgraded.  That’s the real secret of a good education.  It’s the gift that keeps on giving.  Because a good education provides you with the ability to keep on learning – and lifetime learning is the key to your success in the dynamic, ever-changing economy.
 
I’ll share with you a figure that illuminates my point.  Over the past decade in the United States, around 30 million jobs have been lost every year, give or take a few million.  In fact, in the year 2000, when unemployment hit its lowest point in the decade, 33 million jobs were lost.  That sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it?  After ten years of losing 30 million jobs a year, the whole country should be out of work, and then some. 

The key is that over the same period, about 30 million jobs were created every year, give or take a few million.  In some years the gain is slighter greater than the loss.  In other years – the opposite is true.

It sounds chaotic, but that is the path of progress. Look at history.  A hundred years ago 40% of the U.S. workforce was in agriculture, at a time when our population totaled 90 million.  Today, agriculture accounts for less than 2% of our workforce and we’re a nation of nearly 300 million people, and we’re better fed as a nation, and we’re doing more to feed the rest of the world as well. 

Imagine the United States today with 40% of its workforce in farming.  How many of you studied agriculture?  If 2 out of 5 workers were in farming today, we wouldn’t have enough people for our growth industries such as information technology, biotechnology and healthcare.

Agriculture is honorable work – farmers feed our nation, and our nation feeds much of the world.  But today, we’re able to do that job with far fewer people.  That’s an economic success story in the big picture, but it caused countless individual dislocations, as folks moved from the country to the cities over the course of a century, and took up new work.  It’s still happening today, and it’s tough on a lot of families. 

The new jobs are often different from the old jobs because our economy keeps changing and creating new opportunities.  We keep getting more productive.  It takes less time to do the same amount of work, thanks to better education and better technology.  So as we keep getting more productive, workers get paid more for what they do because they are getting more done.

That’s good, but the market requires everybody to be on their toes.  The dynamic of the marketplace leads to the constant creation of new businesses and new jobs to go where the growth is.

The truth is, in America, there will always be plenty of jobs created for everyone, as long as Americans are free to create them.
So how do jobs get created?  Where will we find the jobs of the future?
Jobs come from new ideas, from discovery, from innovations.  And by their very nature the innovations of the future are not known today.  They require risk-taking and overcoming uncertainty, and they require lifelong learning. 

I don’t know where new jobs will come from, in biotech or software, ball bearings or space exploration.  Or maybe something I’ve never heard of, but something one of you has been researching every day for two years.  I don’t know exactly where they’ll come – that’s why we have markets – but I know how they‘ll come: from capital and labor finding the most productive opportunities in the market, from new ideas, and from investors and innovators prepared to risk their time and capital to create something new. 

In the American economy, new ideas are always displacing old ideas; new management processes are displacing old management processes; new technologies are displacing older technologies.  And all the while, productivity is rising, the standard of living is rising, and wealth is rising.  People have the opportunity to lead more abundant lives.

Interwoven in all of this is education.  To work or invest or invent on the frontiers of our economy, to ride the wave, you need education.  You need training.  You need flexibility.  That’s true whether you’re looking for your first job out of college, or you’re a venture capitalist putting a million dollars into the biotech startup of a newly minted VCU grad.

Let me give you an example of the need for lifelong learning.  No one is too smart to need further education.  Alan Greenspan, the eminent chairman of the Federal Reserve, is well known for his deep erudition and mastery of financial matters.   I was talking with Alan some years back.  He told me he had gone back to the books, the mathematics books, to master the complex mathematical theory behind derivatives. 

Alan explained that derivatives were becoming a bigger and bigger part of what the Federal Reserve System needed to be concerned about.   And derivatives, which are highly sophisticated investment tools, are based on a system of underlying mathematical constructs. 

Think of that: the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, who years ago got a PhD in economics, one of the leading financial figures in the world, goes back to the books.  But that is the world we are in; that is the world you are entering.  You can never be satisfied with what you know.  Instead, draw strength from what you have learned about how to learn.  Learn through studying, and learn through doing.

People that pursue a new opportunity are taking a risk.  They often fail.  The key is that they learn, and try again.  The secret of American economic success is failure! – or perhaps that we allow people to fail and start over again.  If it were easy to exploit new opportunities, they wouldn’t be opportunities for long. 

Those who take the risks – with their time, money, and reputations, must be able to claim their reward when they succeed, and learn their lessons when they fail.  A lot of people learned lessons in the dotcom boom and bust, for example.  Maybe some of you.  Some succeeded, but many did not.  But there’s no stigma for having worked for a start-up that failed.  In fact, in many quarters, it’s a right of passage.

And that risk with your time – that includes education.  Many of you stepped out of the work force, you passed up jobs you could have had, because you felt that with a better education, you could do better for yourself.  You took a tougher road for a greater reward.  You had that confidence in your abilities, your ability to learn, and your future.  You made the right choice.

I’ll tell you another thing – since exchanging my job in Richmond for one in Washington, I’ve been impressed.  I’ve been impressed with our President’s understanding of exactly these issues.  He knows the importance of lifelong learning, in education and training, and he knows the value of incentives for investment and job creation. 

President Bush’s administration is striving to encourage entrepreneurship, capital formation, and education.  This year’s tax program was the first in decades to focus on reducing taxes on capital formation, such as taxes on dividends and capital gains.  At the same time, the President’s “No Child Left Behind” Act invests more in education, and it introduces key concepts of innovation and competition into the market for education.  In education, as in business, there should be rewards for success.

And we’re seeing success.  Our economy set a twenty year record for growth last quarter, and job creation is up.  VCU graduates, your prospects are good.
Go pursue your dreams.  You are now armed to do so.  And remember, never stop learning.

Congratulations again to you, your families and your teachers.  Thank you.