Interest Area
Workforce
Our Thinking
We believe that AI and emerging technology are fundamentally shaping the nature of work and employment. How might we best empower workers and communities to shape and utilize new technologies and prevent harms in the workplace?
Our Inquiry Areas
We prioritize advancing actionable insights into how AI and emerging technologies transform work and the work environment. We aim to support organizations that address workers’ needs and perspectives around work-impacting technologies through pilot programs, case studies, and other research initiatives.
Inquiry Area
AI in the Workplace
While empirical research on AI and work is growing, AI’s possible impacts on work and workers remain largely unknown. AI affects not just the content of jobs (tasks that might be replaced), but also the context – including the hiring, management, and monitoring of workers, as well as the worker experience. We seek to better understand both how employers are deploying AI in the workplace and how workers might harness new technologies to advance their livelihoods.
Inquiry Area
Rural Workforce Ecosystems
Many cities have systems in place to generate growth: skilled workers, high quality universities, entrepreneurial spirit, quality of life, ample infrastructure, and a base of venture capital that can turn new ideas into profitable companies. However, not everyone within these cities participates in or benefits from rapidly growing, innovative sectors. Not all cities become high-performance hubs, and not every hub emerges organically. Creating more equitable innovation in these communities would mean changing the systems that support innovation, so that more people are included in, and benefit from, rapidly growing and innovating sectors.
Highlighted Grantees
Washington Center for Equitable Growth
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth is a nonprofit research and grantmaking organization dedicated to advancing evidence-backed ideas and policies that promote strong, stable, and broad-based economic growth. Their fundamental purpose is to determine the channels through which rising economic inequality affects economic growth and stability in the United States.
Economic Policy Institute
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank working for the last 30 years to counter rising inequality, low wages and weak benefits for working people, slower economic growth, unacceptable employment conditions, and a widening racial wage gap. They intentionally center low- and middle-income working families in economic policy discussions at the federal, state, and local levels as they fight for a world where every worker has access to a good job with fair pay, affordable health care, retirement security, and a union.
AFL-CIO Tech Institute
The AFL-CIO Tech Institute works at the intersection of technological innovation in the workplace, centering worker knowledge, expertise, and interests in our modern innovation-based economy with the goal of ensuring that technological change creates widespread prosperity for all American workers. They work with a broad set of stakeholders, including unions and their members, universities, public officials, funders and employers to develop educational tools, policy analysis, and strategies to advance the needs and interests of working people in our rapidly shifting tech economy.
Workforce Insights
Big Ideas | From Our Grantees
Introducing Our BRIC Case Studies
The Black River Innovation Campus (BRIC) in Springfield, Vermont, is a powerful example of community-driven innovation in a rural community…
From Our Grantees | Research
Q&A with Siegel Research Fellow and Director of Technology Policy at the Center for American Progress Megan Shahi
Siegel Research Fellow, Megan Shahi, reflects on why she’s urging tech companies to take concrete actions to protect democracy in…
From Our Grantees
Raising the Bar on AI Reporting
AI Primers for Journalists is the latest in a series of emerging tech primers researched, written, and published by Aspen…