Skills and Future of Work

AI is supposedly going to make America’s current level of income inequality explode. That will not happen. The idea rests on far-fetched assumptions about monopolies, mass job loss, and winner-take-all dynamics that AI won’t change.

Opposition to AI automation at the Canada Revenue Agency misses the point. Smarter systems can improve targeting, boost compliance, and deliver better results with fewer resources than a labour-intensive enforcement model.

AI isn’t about to wipe out entry-level jobs. The data says otherwise, history contradicts it, and productivity gains will create new opportunities.

As Korea’s labor debate moves into digital policy, unions risk harming workers in the next generation of industries by prioritizing protections for existing jobs over preparing workers for technological transition.

A poll built on leading questions, false choices, and fearmongering does not reflect actual public opinion on AI. It shows how to optimize disinformation for partisan messaging.

Seventy percent of young Koreans hold university degrees. Only 14 percent of jobs are in large firms. The most immediate concern is not jobs disappearing due to AI, but that there are too few high-quality jobs in the first place.

Rather than proposing universal basic income as the solution to robots supposedly taking all our jobs, the task should be to improve federal worker adjustment assistance programs.

We should want companies to shed workers they no longer need. Productivity gains flow to lower prices, higher wages, and long-term growth. Don’t slow innovation—accelerate it.

While the Hyundai Motor case now sits at the center of Korea’s AI jobs debate, the evidence suggests that the nation’s more immediate constraints are weak productivity growth and uneven labor-market adjustment—not large-scale technological displacement. How Korea responds will shape its competitiveness in a high-cost, aging manufacturing economy under intensifying global competition.

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