November 15, 2024
Calibration: Making AI a Partner at Work
Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the workforce, yet the workers who stand to benefit the most are often the most wary of it. Lower-skilled and less-educated workers view AI as a threat, fearing job loss and marginalization. But research tells a different story. These workers could gain the most from AI—if they learn to use…
November 12, 2024
Irresistible Policy, Meet the Unmovable Labor Market
Gad Levanon, chief economist at The Burning Glass Institute, analyzed data relating to the share of undocumented workers in a wide variety of trades and lower-wage, lower-skilled occupations, as well as higher-skilled jobs in construction and manufacturing. Bear in mind that many of these occupations are related to housing, the largest contributor to our recent bout of high…
October 21, 2024
Dueling Child Tax Credit Proposals: Harris vs. Vance
JD Vance and Kamala Harris have at least one thing in common: proposals to expand the child tax credit (CTC). Currently, the CTC offers households up to $2,000 per child under the age of 17. It phases in as wages exceed $2,500 (an incentive to work) and phases out for high-income workers (a disincentive to…
October 18, 2024
What’s Working in America’s Workforce System
The American workforce is undergoing rapid changes driven by demographic shifts, technological advancements, and evolving skill requirements. During this time of rapid disruption, the question arises: How can our training programs and workforce development systems do a better job of supporting workers and employers to meet their skill and employment needs? The Workforce Futures Initiative (WFI)—a collaborative research effort between…
October 8, 2024
Unplanned Obsolescence
Tech sector layoffs have grabbed a lot of headlines over the past two years since the Federal Reserve ended its zero interest rate policy that enabled vast investment in research, development, and high-tech start-ups and as artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to reshape a growing number of sectors. A recent article from the Wall Street Journal highlights a harsh…
October 3, 2024
The New “Old Girls Network” in the American Workplace
One of America’s great success stories has been the gradual opening of opportunities for women in nearly every field, from athletics to higher education. Nowhere has the change been more profound than in the workplace. In 1970, just over 15 percent of all management jobs were held by women. According to McKinsey, that figure has now risen…
August 20, 2024
The Robots Are Going to Take These Jobs. Thank Goodness.
Today, The Verge profiled a new Tesla project aimed at training robots for routine materials movement. The company is hiring workers between 5’7” and 5’11” to move 30-pound packages while wearing sensor arrays and virtual reality goggles. These workers will provide the motion capture data to train Tesla’s Optimus robots, which will eventually begin taking over this…
August 7, 2024
A Bipartisan Solution to the Child Tax Credit Impasse
Last week, the Senate rejected a child tax credit revision that had bipartisan House support. It would have enabled more of the credit to be refundable to families with no employment income. Republican senators voted against it because they believed that providing unconstrained income to poor households would reduce their work effort. This was one of…
August 2, 2024
Democrats’ Automatic Stimulus Proposals Undermine the Administration’s “Strongest Economy” Claims
Today’s US jobs report finds the nation’s unemployment rate increased to 4.3 percent in July. According to a measure often cited by liberal policymakers, that suggests the US has entered a recession, undercutting President Biden’s boast just last week that the US has “the strongest economy in the world.” That grinding contradiction is only reinforced…
July 17, 2024
Key Takeaways from a New Report on Potential Unemployment Insurance Reforms
Yesterday, the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) released the final report of its Unemployment Insurance (UI) Task Force, of which I am a member. The task force was created in December 2020, as state UI agencies were besieged by record pandemic benefit claims and unprecedented fraud. I was one of several members added in late 2023. The purpose…