This week’s featured startup
Parker Dewey (Jeffrey Moss, Founder and CEO) – We help employers recruit college students and recent grads, while providing on-demand support for busy professionals. By offering short-term projects to assess, engage and recruit prospective candidates, companies can improve hiring, diversity, and retention outcomes.
Data Dive
Month-to-month increase in unemployment came from a surge in one category (BLS, NBER) – In July’s disappointing report, almost the entire month-to-month increase in unemployment came from “unemployment due to temporary layoff,” i.e. people who expect to be recalled to work. A sign of impending recession? Probably not.
Investment
Emomee Raises $1 Million in Pre-Seed Funding – The edutainment brand is dedicated to unlocking emotional intelligence through an interconnected ecosystem of content, play, and learning tools.
WorkJam Raises $20M in Funding – WorkJam provides a digital frontline workplace used by companies in retail, travel/hospitality, manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare industries.
Icebreaker Raises $5M in Seed Funding – Icebreaker allows anyone to instantly prove credentials about themselves, and provide verifiable endorsements for others.
Educately secures $2.5mln funding round co-led by Egypt Venture – Educatly aims to assist students in answering the most critical questions of what and where to study to achieve a bright professional future.
GigPro Secures $16M Series A Financing Round to Transform Hospitality Labor Market – Gigpro addresses labor challenges in the hospitality industry, where 79% of restaurants face staffing shortages, and attrition rates are twice the national average.
Revolutionizing the Future of Work: FusionGig Announces €1 Million Funding Round – The platform uses AI and machine learning to match employers with the best-suited freelancers.
YC alum Fluently’s AI-powered English coach attracts $2M seed round – There are plenty of resources to learn English, but not so many for near-native speakers who still want to improve their fluency.
Uplimit, the AI-Powered Enterprise Learning Platform, Announces $11M Series A Funding Round Led by Salesforce Ventures – Quality education requires content investments to provide personalized feedback and support, which limits scale. Courses that cut corners to scale often fail to deliver outcomes.
Events
The State of Education Venture Capital: What’s Still Getting Funded and Where Is Fundraising Headed Next (EdWeek Market Brief) – Aug 20: Join this briefing discussing how education VCs believe the next few years will play out in ed tech.
How I Built This Career as an Education GTM (Folio Events) – (Aug 9) Siya Raj Purohit of OpenAI explains her role, how she got there, lessons learned and speculates on the future.
Opportunities
Comcast Commits $35M to Support Hundreds of Community Organizations in Expanding Economic Opportunity for the Team of Tomorrow – The investment will support nonprofit partners making impact at scale in the areas of research, digital skills training, entrepreneurship, and creativity.
Department of Labor awards over $56M in grants to help justice-involved people get needed job – The grants help eliminate gaps between release from prison or jail and enrollment in a workforce development program.
US Department Of Labor Announces $45M In Funds Available To Improve Employment Opportunities For Young People Affected By Violence, Poverty – The funds will provide skills training through work-based learning, employment services, educational support and mentorship to young adults age 15-24.
Human Potential Summit – Solution Pitch Competition – Apply by Friday, Aug 9! Announcing the inaugural Solution Pitch Competition focused on employer solutions that enable workers to achieve greater economic mobility.
In the news
Opinion: AI Will Not Solve Education, Here’s Why (Fast Company) – The science of learning says the best study methods have one thing in common: They’re hard. Without intellectual challenge, there is no intellectual change.
Tech giants’ AI will transform 92% of ICT jobs: We must upskill now (VentureBeat) – Report from AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium, which also plans to introduce an AI Workforce Playbook to help enterprises proactively reskill and upskill workforces.
How teaming up talent and AI will shape the future of work (Fast Company) – Six years ago, few would have predicted the remote work landscape we currently navigate. And now we’re expecting AI to significantly change the workplace again.
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