During this election cycle, we’ve heard a lot from the presidential candidates about the struggles of America’s workers and their families. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump each want to claim the mantle as the country’s pro-worker candidate. Accordingly, union leaders took the stage not only at the Democratic National Convention, as usual, but at the Republican convention too. At the VP debate, J.D. Vance and Tim Walz offered competing views on how best to support workers.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Surprisingly, one economic issue the candidates have yet to address is one in which millions of voters have a great deal at stake: the looming impact of new generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technologies on work and livelihoods. The candidates’ silence belies a stark reality: the next president will take office in a world already changed by GenAI—and heading for much greater disruption.
Our new research at Brookings shows why this requires urgent attention and why it matters to voters. In a new study using data provided by one of the leading AI developers, OpenAI, we analyzed over a thousand occupations for their likely exposure to GenAI and its growing capabilities. Overall, we find that some 30% of the workforce could see at least half of their work tasks impacted—though not necessarily automated fully—by today’s GenAI, while more than 85% of all workers could see at least 10% of their tasks impacted. Even more powerful models are planned for release soon, with those requiring minimal human oversight likely to follow.
America’s workers are smart. They are far more concerned about GenAI reshaping livelihoods than leaders in government and business have acknowledged so far. In a 2023 Pew Center survey, nearly two-thirds (62%) of adults say they believe GenAI will have a major impact on jobs and jobholders—mostly negative—over the next two decades.
Yet technology is not destiny. AI capabilities alone will not determine the future of work. Workers, rather, can shape the trajectory of AI’s impact on work—but only if they have a voice in the technology’s design and deployment.
Who will be most affected by GenAI? Most of us will probably be surprised. We tend to think of men in blue-collar, physical roles in factories and warehouses as the workers most exposed to automation, and frequently they have been, along with dock workers and others. Yet GenAI, and the related software systems it integrates with, turn these assumptions on their head: manually intensive blue-collar roles are likely to be least and last affected. The same applies to electricians, plumbers and other relatively well-paying skilled trades occupations boosted by the nation’s net zero transition and massive investments in infrastructure. Instead, it is knowledge work: creative occupations, and office-based roles that are most exposed to technologies like ChatGPT and DALL-E, at least in the near term.
It is also women, not men, who face the greatest risk of disruption and automation. This is especially true of women in middle-skill clerical roles—currently nearly 20 million jobs—that have long offered a measure of economic security for workers without advanced degrees, for example in roles such as HR assistant, legal secretary, bookkeeper, customer service agent, and many others. The stakes are high for this racially and ethnically diverse group of lower-middle-class women, many of whom risk falling into more precarious, lower-paid work if this work is displaced.
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All of this raises the question of what it will take to make sure most workers gain, rather than lose, from AI’s uncanny and often impressive capabilities. To be sure, we can’t predict the speed and scale of future AI advances. But what is clear is that the design and deployment of generative AI technologies is moving far faster than our response to shaping it. Fundamental questions, which the next president and Congress will need to address, remain unanswered: How do we ensure workers can proactively shape AI’s design and deployment? What will it take to ensure workers benefit meaningfully from AI’s strengths? And what guardrails are needed for workers to avoid AI’s harmsas much as possible?
Here’s a key issue: Among the most pressing priorities for the next president to address is what we call the “Great Mismatch,” the reality that the occupations most likely to see disruptions from AI are also the least likely to employ workers who belong to a union or have other forms of voice and representation.
In an era of technological change, Americans are clear about the benefits of unions. According to new Gallup polling, 70% of Americans hold a positive view of unions—the highest approval in 60 years. And both Harris and Trump have aggressively courted unions in their campaigns. Yet in the sectors where GenAI is poised to create the most change, as few as 1% of workers benefit from union representation (the public sector workforce is a notable exception).
This stark mismatch poses a serious risk for workers. In 2023, Hollywood writers showed the country why collective worker power is so critical in an era of technological disruption. Concerned that technology like ChatGPT could threaten their livelihoods, thousands of writers went on strike for five months. By securing first-of-their-kind protections in the contract they negotiated with major studios, the writers set a historic precedent: it is now up to the writerswhether and how they use generative AI as a tool to assist and complement—not replace—them.
Writer Raphael Bob-Waksberg, creator of the show BoJack Horseman, said, of his union’s AI victories and what they could mean for other workers, “Workers are going to demand similar things in their industries, because this affects all different kinds of people … I think it’s going to require unions. I think you can create some guardrails around it and use political power and worker power to protect people.”
The lack of worker voice and influence over deployment of GenAI should be a core concern for workers and policymakers alike—but it should get employers’ attention too.
Research shows there are big benefits to companies from incorporating workers and their unique knowledge and insights into the design and rollout of new technologies, compared to top-down implementation. Which means there is a powerful business case for worker engagement.
For now, almost none of the developers and deployers of AI are engaging workers or viewing them as uniquely capable partners. To the contrary, at least in private, many business leaders convey a sense of inevitability at the mention of AI’s growing risks for workers and their livelihoods. It’s no secret that relentless pressure to maximize short-term earnings, especially for publicly traded companies, focuses many CEOs on cutting labor costs in every way possible. It remains to be seen whether the coming AI revolution will defy the fixation on “lean and mean” operations, which came to dominate American corporate strategy a generation ago.
Presidential elections offer voters a referendum on the past as well as the future, even if the latter is only partly visible for now. AI represents one of the great challenges of our time, posing both risks and opportunities for the American worker. The next president will need to help determine the policies, investments, guardrails and social protections—or lack of same—that will shape the future of work for millions of Americans. It’s time we learned whether the candidates for that office understand that.
