Transcripts For KQED Nightly Business Report 20240714 : vima

KQED Nightly Business Report July 14, 2024

The bagel shop in washington, d. C. , and business is heating. Up it only opened in october, but already owner andrew dana is looking for a second location and the workers to run it. Were planning on minimum 20 people, and ift is reall booming it will be more than that. So that will take us over the 100 employee mark, which is etty crazy. Reporter it is just one example of americas red j hot market, now nearly nine years strong. The economy has added 21 million jobs since 2010ennd unemplo is at the lowest rate since 1969, just 3. 7 . This is recovery people have counted out again and again and it just keeps truckin along. Reporter the ton three sectors for job growth this year, restaurants like collier mother a a other businesses in industry. Re and hospitality they added an average of 23,000 jobs a month. Second professional and Business Services growing b 33,000 jobs a month. Topping the list, health care, delivering 55,000 jobs a month. But experts arein sta to worry that troub t lies ahead. The economy isnt growing as fast as it did last year, and hiring has slowed down too, averaging 165,000 jobs a month so far this yr. Compare that to 227,000 jobs over the same period last year. Retailers are struggling, shedding workers almostvery nth, and manufacturing has taken a hit, adding an average of 8,000 jobs amonth, down from 22,000 lastear. The absolutely slowed down from last year, and part of what were seeing is just that the policy factors we have all been discussing for a while like the trade war are starting to bite. Are seeing companies startinin to have to change their hiring o t accommodate that volatility and uncertainty about the trade outlook that theyve been putting off. T reporteres good news for workers though. Wages are finally rising after remainingtagnant for years. At clier mother, employees can make up to 28 an hour including tips but it is not just the money that attracts workers. We offer w health insurance, 401 k . Thisser use this year we added dental and vision, free gym membership, free language classes. The Fund Committee is out of control. Reporter he wants to make su the business and bagels never get s for nightly business report, im ylan mui in washington. Once aonth on the d when the government releases its employment report we bring you the story of an entrepreneur who had a bright idea and was able to turn it into a successful business. Tonight were going revisit a couple of those stories and find we begegh a Company Called rapid sos, which is helping to bring ecergency ser communicions like 911 into the sodern age. Here i the story we brought you first. Were here taking one of the shows you are at is about eporter i a problem that has dogged 911 operators. Built in the 1960s, 911 works wellith land line phones, but call on a cellphone and 911 gets only an approximate location, often using c nearbl towers. Even if the call is made at a 911 call center. Roughly 4,000 meter away from where we actually are at. Reporter thats why joe thomass staff at the Sussex County Emergency Operations center in delaware is testing rapid sos, software allowing the existing 911 system to read more data coming from smartphones. It pinpoints it right on top of the building where were located. Reporter Michael Martin got the idea after hee felt like h had been followed home in new york cityne night back20 in. 911 call takers are doing theroic work in light ot challenge, but were giving them those calls. Data to manage reporter in grad school he teamed with nicholas horlick who volunteered taking calls on an in college. Line it was the same type of problem. Someone is cal ng in, theyre in distress and no idea where they are. Reporter so they cofounded rapid so but perhaps more important tn their tech knowhow was the four years they took infrom and many officials the 911 call centers. In 2016 they released a fe app called haven. I was tryin to go to the Grandfather Mountain ste park. Reporter he got lost when a thick, damp fog rolled in as he hiked in north carolinas blue ridge mountains. Your mind goes into frantic mode. Rr he typed the app on his phone. The operator told me to stay where i was and aark ranger would be there within 15 minutes and they were. Reporter for some it cant happen soon enough. In 24 an fcc study said fixing 911 location issues could save more than 10,000 lives a year. Talked about it b there hasnt been any legislation let alone any passage of something that woue a difference. Reporter tom wheeler is one of three former fcc chairmen who invested in rapid sos. They have built a plaidm f that can be applicable in multiple kinds of situations, not just 911 calls. Reporter those situations, upgrades to home secury, car monitors le onstar and Wearable Health devices are where rapid sos hopes to make money. If this were on a Health Wearable devi, this screen will have health information, heart rate, blood pressure. If it isif coming from a connecd car, now it is a picture of the car, where was impact, airbags deployed, who was wearing a seatbelt, how many peopleere in the car. Reporter the cost . About 3 to 10 a month. It could be a small price to pay. The enormity of what it is we work on re, i think thataf cts everybody on our team. I mean thats what really drives all of us. This is technology thatav going tothe power to save a lot of lives. And rapid sos c founder michol martin joins us this evening from san francisco. It is great to see you, michael. Welcome back. Good to be back. Thank you. Sin our story aired, rapid sos has seen a lot of big n change the least of which are partnarships with apple and google, making location data from their phones available to 911 call centers. E how valas it been for all of us in general, ofcourse, but also rapid sos in particular . Ye it has just been extraordinary to see that work with apple and google, uber and micr to pass this lifesaving data to thousands of first responderie age in emergencies. We now manage close to 400,000 emergencies per day, and since launching last year weve managed nearly 90illion emergencies with over 5,000 lives saved isstcally. So it is from where we started, it is just extraordinary to see the impact with First Responders across the united states. I think you just mentioned uber as mell. In this location tecology is not just for emergencies, it helps locate riders as well. How did you make the jumpo i that . Yes, the core Location Technology is de by t isting providers, but what were providing is all of this rich content directlynto 911 and fir responders. So in the case of an uber, if theres some sortic of m emergency or an emergency in a vehicle, not only can we pass ak location, but model, color of the vehicle, realtime route information. So a variety of data that can really have an impact as first rers try to reach you in thth incident. Where is your next growthh area ierms of bringing in more revenue . So if we think about just the sce of emergencies acroshe united states, we have close to that havearious forms ofio ow lifesaving data. Where were heading nextnk is g all of that content, whether it is Realtime Health data from a arable, realtime crash data in a vehicle incident or data from a connected building if theres a fire or Something Like that, and putting that directly into the hands of 911 and First Responders. The impact obviously is a significantly faster, more chfective response, w reduces costs across the ecosystem, particularly for ofte paying for the damages from these incidents. Imri s, this all grew from this insight that you had that night when you felt like you were being followed. What do you tell to bding entrepreneurs who have a bright idea that they want to convert into a business . I think what was so impactful for us was finding this community of people who believed in that mission. I mean i was a kid that grew u indiana, but fortunately found over 4,000 first responds that believed in what we were trying to do. Ultimately, an o ecosyst partners including Big Tech Companies like apple, google, uber, et cetera. I think that ecosystem made the vision a reality. Best of luck to you, michael. Cant wait to get another update. Rapidup sos cofounder, michael rtin. Thank you. Now the other bright idea that we brought you before, what do you do when you passion is puzzles . Back in 2013 when video wasnt as clear as it is now, we introduced you to david hoyt. He quit lucrative job to create games, word games. Now you might even call him americas wordsmith. Thats the way, if everyone agrees, everyone has to agree. Whoooks more puzzled, david hoyt or these fifth gders . If your answer is david, thats okay. His specialty isnt solving puzzles, it is makinthem. Have become the most syndicated puzzle creator in the world. T in the basem of hi chisholm, starting about 4 00 a. M. Every day, he masterminds puzzles synd in more than 600 newspapers, reaching about 70 Million People every day. And then when he is done, are a number of other puzzles tr piece toge i have word roundup in usa today, up and downwards in usa today. Not bad for a High School Dropout who never went to college. He started trading oions in a chicag did pretty well, but it left him puzzled about his if i had never stopped future. Trading . I would be the worlds biggest idiot. He noticed a friend was making money by inventing games. I decided that im going toy quit job, i a going to save up a little bit of money and im going to itantly become successful. Well, that didnt quite work out. He triedde ridling this game and that game in between partte jobs for four long years. I had a game called economic warfar it was a strug but his cupishalffull attitudeal even paid off. If i was successful on my first one, i would have tsught i h smarter than i actually was. In fact, i needed ndno, a then why. In 1996 he brought a word game into trivi media servrves, hoping to marry it to their jumble brand. They bit and turned it intomb plus, but it wa just the beginning. My brain just g. Ought, wow, if theyre willing to do this, maybe how about jumble cross word, how about tv jumble, how about jumble brain esters. Hept at the various jumbs for 15 years, taking over the original jumble in 2011 when his predecessor r rired and teaming up with a cartoonist, st hoyt helped toreathe new life into a brand dating back to the mid 1950 ey mix in pop culture like dig tracie or star wars. Hoyt developed word games for pets, sajax brand, and then his own on, word winder, where players aim to string words all the waycrs the board. Word winr began over beers at english publ on chicagos noh side. He said it only sold tens of thousands of cops for 20 each. There was a book and app. Peopleave to work together. The giant classroom version . It was suggested by an Illinois School teacher. Since then outs educationda on has worked with teachers who often use it as a teaching tool. Teachers have basicallyas demanded that we do this because theyre not taking no for an sw , and kids just love it. So now we have to do this. I love word winders and joining usnce again from chigo is americas david, good to see you. Thanks for joining us again tonight. Thank you for hme. We should point out, by the way, anybody looking for the word winder board game, it out of production at the moment, right . It is. We are revamping the boardgame, so hopefully it will be back soon. I always said that anybody highly intelligent, and you are intellectually restless, and you certainly fit that mold. You have been able to just tako rtunity after opportuty after opportunity. Where does this go now . I mean you areit working libraries and other educational institutions, right . Es. En i firstir invented word winder orinvented word winder, the goal was to make a lot of money and then do cool things. What happened was we just how hard it is to make a game. What happened was that we changed our focus. Once we started working with kids in schools and libraries, just i loved it. Like i love working with kids, and i didnt even know it. So we started the david l. Hoyt educ foundation. My wife, claire, is the director of it. Now what is happening is we are meeting a bun o different people coming into our lives who want to help us, and, you know, has taken us down a different path but i love the path. Im very excited to be a part of it. Wre you hearing from teachers or what did youfr see teachers when you first put the game into the classroom tha made you wano go down that path . It is a collaborative game. Kids have to w tkether. Weve gotten feedback from teachers and librarians tust it was off the charts. Some of them say it is the best game of its kind. They all want it, but what we didnt realize was just how difficult it was to go into business and, you know, get the game made, get it sold. It was just a muchus bigger undertaking than we realized. Im the kind of guy, i like to do everything myself. This is something i cannot do myself, and now i want to get as much help as possible. My wife is a big fan of the jumble. Morning. It every single she will be thrilled to know i got to talk to you tonight. Do you still get up at 4 00 a. M. And work those things out . Where do those ideas come fro d i get up at 4 00 a. M. In fact, if i am working at 4 00 a. M. I ami late. Eel like im up about 3 30 now. But, you know, t ideas for the jumble i feel c likee from life. Ill be walking down the street and get an idea. But the t amazing is, you know, i come up with the puzz part and the words, but jeffs artwork is just incredible. He is just getng bette and better. I have a fun job of suggesting a, you ow, t cartoon jeff and every time i get it back it just blows my mind how great it is. Hes a great partner to work with. Ou also have a game you are developing around golf at this n point, which apparently is your, passut it is on hold a little bit because o o the tarif situation . Yes. Yes, here is the fast version of this. I teamed up with pga teaching pro don pa er, who is also a former teacher in school, and he and i took the underlying giant word winder game play and wki of turned it into golf words. It is incredible. The feedback we a getting is just amazing. But i had learned so ch, you know, going through the process of trying to develop giant word winder that i knew we needed oather than try to do this myself, we teamed up with diane bergen, the former United Airlines executive,nd she has done an amazing job of getng this thing prototyped and tested and made, but it is all being made in china and everying is a little bit on hnod right yes. You got to work through those once in a while as well as an entrepreneur. David hoyt, good to see you again. Thanks for joining us tonight. Youre very welcome. Still ahead, all labor shorte of pilots and the push to get more women to take flight. Will be needed worldwide and many of the Major Airlines are making their pitche to women be the leaders in the cockpit. Jane wells has t ut story for tonight from anchorage, alaska. Reporter on anr airstrip i anchorage, alaska is o of the top Flight Schools in the country. Owned and operated by a woman who started ao Flight School after the one she was working at didnt like her style. Iovated this building, and iand had people knocking on my door from ground 7734. Reporter Jamie Patterson sims of sky t alaska has been recognized as an faaold seal flight instructor, yet men in the cockpit remain an oldity. Only 6 of the pilots at the toi three as are female. That surprises beverly bass, hired by American Airlines in 1976 as its first female captain. Talked abow that all the time, and think for the most part women are just still not aware that that is job opportunity that is reporter boein r estimates the global Aviation Industry will need 800,000 new pilots over the next 20 men. Women like jesse and women like madiso both taking lessons in anchorage with aag femalest ctor. She doesnt let me get away with anything, which i appreciate. Y mom owns auge native corporation up here so im super used to women welling met to do. Reporter all three major u. S. Airlines steppedli up pilo recruiting, targeting women with Financial Aid f flight skill. Pay is based purely on the type of aircraft flown, b surveys by embry riddle suggestss gers are not as comfortable with women in the cockpit as men. Berl s bass who hasn it all say female pilots are no better or worse than men, but they can multi task. I know i could cook dinner, feed a baby and talk on the lephone all at the same time. Reporter she hopes a new generation of women will love flying as much as she has, each with her own favorite part of the experiyce. Proba when the wels lift off. When you first rotate the plane and you kind of hover for a second, it is the wicoolest feeling ever. Reporter for nightly business report, im jane wells in anchorage, alaska. A program out of syracuse suniversity is described a business boot camp. Its goal is to help female veterans become entrepreneurs. Cont sa brewer has more on getting from the battlefield to the board room. Reporter natasha spent 20 years in the army. Ad i opportunities to be a commander. I was airborne. Operations. Special i supported special operations around the world. Reporter when she a retired wi of her skills and logistics and management, she took a job at williamssonoma. There were some hurdles. It was the lack of camaraderie, a lack of u values. Ow, vicivilian values are different than mility values. Reporte after seven months she quit. Though she landed an interview at amazonat she opted to start her own busines shoes. I remember how much i loved shoes from being stationed i italy. To get her shoe business off the ground she needed a bt dmp, one designed especially for entrepreneurs and especially for veterans. She founde it her at syracuse university. With an institute for veterans and military families, theyre tackling the challenge ofti traning fm armed forces to civilian life. For women e it can becially challenging. Getting transition right is core t ensuring longterm employ ability and financial independence. Reporter Maureen Casey testifd before congress abo the problem. Women make 30 on average less an male counterpart and may struggle in a corporate environment. We have seen an upp tick in the number of women drawn to entrepreneurship programs, running counter to the trend where we have seen a de

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