May 2, 2025
Without Qualified Workers, Our CHIPS Investments Could Be Money Down the Drain
Three years ago, the Biden administration, backed by big bipartisan majorities in Congress, launched the CHIPS and Science Act to revitalize domestic semiconductor manufacturing. After decades of outsourcing that reduced the U.S. production share of advanced chips from 37 percent to 10 percent, this “industrial policy” investment was justified as necessary for national security and as a measure to reinvigorate…
May 1, 2025
Tariffs Plus AI Makes for a Rocky Job Market. How Should Workers Prepare?
In today’s labor market, few occupations are safe from AI disruption. It’s been a rough month for hiring plans. The market volatility ignited by President Donald Trump’s tariff policies has made business planning difficult, and that includes any intentions of hiring. Combined with the accelerating adoption of artificial intelligence, disruptions to the labor market don’t…
April 24, 2025
AI “Slop” Comes for Job Interviews
We have all gotten used to the idea that generative AI can help bad writers become better (or at least appear to be better) than they are when left to their own skills. This has resulted in some challenges for hiring managers struggling to cope with the tsunami of applications and cover letters that make…
April 21, 2025
The City That’s Always Working
Among the sectors of the US economy most exposed to AI-driven automation is finance. This is unsurprising given that banking and financial advising are massive knowledge management operations, constantly scanning the globe—like the Eye of Sauron—for opportunities and risks. One of the main applications of AI in the finance sector is helping firms understand themselves,…
April 19, 2025
Workplace Segregation between College and Non-College Workers
Abstract We measure the level and growth of education segregation in American workplaces from 2000 to 2020. American workplaces show an educational segregation, measured by the degree to which the establishment has mostly workers of similar education levels, that is comparable to racial residential segregation in a typical metro area. Workplace isolation was particularly high…
April 15, 2025
Is There Really Pent-Up Demand for Ten Times the Manufacturing Jobs We Have?
Data analysis is hard. Admittedly, the consequences of getting it wrong are less severe than a botched surgery. But you still want to be very careful. It’s all too easy for a misinterpretation of the facts to harm important policy debates. For an example, look no further than the debate over the past couple of…
April 9, 2025
Measuring and Building Human Leadership in an AI World
A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, Measuring Human Leadership Skills With AI Agents, presents evidence that artificial intelligence may soon play a central role in evaluating human soft skills—long considered too complex and subjective to measure objectively. Conducted by Ben Weidmann and David Deming et al. at the Harvard Kennedy School,…
March 26, 2025
The Surprising Benefits of “Cooperative” AI
The Impact of AI on Work Quality and Collaboration: Insights from a Harvard Business School Study One of the great promises of the artificial intelligence era is the potential of the technology to democratize skill. Just as the internet and personal digital technology made it possible for us to instantly access the sum of all human knowledge, AI is creating…
March 25, 2025
AI Talent: It’s Not Just for High Tech Anymore
We appear to be approaching the break-out phase of artificial intelligence’s diffusion across the American economy. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, recent data from the University of Maryland’s AI job tracker finds that nearly 25 percent of tech job postings earlier this year mentioned AI skills. And it isn’t just the tech sector that’s hiring—finance, professional…
March 19, 2025
AI and Jobs: Measuring Impact and Building New Assessment Tools
Event Summary On March 19, AEI’s Brent Orrell and Shane Tews hosted a panel discussion featuring Alex Tamkin, an AI researcher at Anthropic, and Jason Owen-Smith, a sociologist at the University of Michigan, on how AI is shaping the labor market and workforce development policy. The conversation was moderated by Axios reporter Ashley Gold. The…