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February 25, 2025
How the AI talent race is reshaping recruitment. A new survey of 250 technical leaders reveals a striking paradox: Companies are dramatically increasing AI investments—some by up to 75 percent in 2025—while simultaneously finding a talent well that is running dry. Ninety-four percent of tech leaders identify talent shortages as their primary barrier to AI innovation, and…
February 24, 2025
It’s all about the skills, not the credentials. You know the labor market times are changing when Harvard MBAs start showing up in the unemployment stories. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, 23 percent of recent Harvard Business School grads were still looking for work three months after graduation. In 2022, that figure was only 10 percent….
February 11, 2025
One of the hottest guessing games in workforce development is figuring out how generative artificial intelligence will affect jobs and how to prepare students and workers for an AI-infused economy. The future of work looks bright, but the full potential of AI to increase productivity and raise wages and incomes will only be realized if…
January 2, 2025
The nation can do better at forecasting AI-driven job and skill changes, including with a data-focused nonprofit that examines the technology’s impact. Markets are the killer app for efficiently organizing unfathomably complex human activities to deliver innovation and prosperity. They can also shift suddenly, creating winners and losers, even as broad measures of economic health…
October 8, 2024
They shouldn’t be trying to block automation. They should be trying adapt to it. The International Longshoremen’s Association ended a three-day strike last Thursday after reaching a deal with a consortium of port operators for a large wage increase for the the 47,000 dockworkers, phased in over the next few years. The deal gives both…
June 6, 2024
Dwight Eisenhower’s advice about plans and planning is still relevant today On June 6, the world will mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings and the 40th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 “the Boys of Pont du Hoc” speech honoring those who helped turn back the Nazi threat on the beaches of Normandy. We are now as far from Reagan’s speech as the speech was…
February 20, 2024
After decades of industrial robots, factory layoffs, and outsourcing, automation has finally arrived in the cubicle. A recent Wall Street Journal article spotlighted how the new “robots for the mind”—the complex algorithms and language models of generative AI—are creating rising uncertainty in the professional class. In the past, automation has generally been more of a concern for blue-collar workers, especially those in the…
January 12, 2024
For decades, automation has been a rough road for middle-skill workers. These jobs used to provide plentiful, family-supporting employment opportunities for those with only a high school education or even less. Robotics and, to a lesser extent, trade dramatically reduced the number of middle-skill jobs leading to what economists called a “polarized” labor market: many high-skilled and low-skilled…
November 27, 2023
The practical advantages of machines better at interpreting, explaining, and anticipating human actions. Recent advances in artificial intelligence demonstrate its growing, and somewhat surprising, potential to imitate sophisticated reasoning tasks previously thought to be reserved to human beings. A new study from researchers at Google, Google DeepMind, the University of Southern California, the University of Chicago, and Carnegie Mellon University reveals progress in developing an…
November 13, 2023
Tech billionaire Elon Musk recently prophesied that there “will come a point where no job is needed,” owing to advances in artificial intelligence. But the fear that AI will cause mass unemployment is rooted in a zero-sum mentality that fundamentally misunderstands how economies evolve. WASHINGTON, DC – In a recent discussion with British Prime Minister Rishi…