Skills and Future of Work

Governments are entering a critical phase in the adoption of AI. It is already contributing to everyday public sector work, and the question is no longer whether to adopt AI, but how to do so both effectively and responsibly. The Public Sector AI Adoption Index 2026 focuses on the human side of AI adoption, examining how it is experienced by public servants every day.

As of November 2025, with over 400 data centers currently under development, the construction industry is facing a shortage of roughly 439,000 workers.

A report finds that firms that are 125 miles from the closest AI hotspot, defined as an area with over 1000 AI publications or patents, experienced 17 percent lower AI job growth between 2007 and 2019.

New research from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that venture capital investment and advanced technology adoption are closely linked to higher employment and productivity. VC-backed, technology-adopting firms account for a disproportionately large share of U.S. jobs, even as venture investment has declined since 2021.

AI isn’t destroying jobs; it’s creating them. At least in 2024, the surge in AI activity and data center construction generated more jobs than AI displaced.

Detractors of capitalism argue that it took over fifty years for the British Industrial Revolution’s benefits to reach average workers. That narrative is at best contested and, at worst, wrong.

If we’re lucky, AI will restore the productivity growth that has eluded us for 15 years—not through dystopian transformation, but through steady, incremental improvements across the economy.

A pro-worker agenda isn’t the same as a “national greatness” agenda. Workers are an interest group like any other: sometimes aligned with what’s best for the American Republic, and sometimes not.

The proposed AI-Related Job Impacts Clarity Act would create misleading, unhelpful data and unfairly stigmatize AI adoption, diverting attention from more effective ways to measure technology’s real impacts and support workers.

Unions are interest groups, and America’s challenges require every group to put the national interest ahead of narrow self-interest. Yes, including blue-collar workers.