Rick Green 200

Brookings cites programs to help displaced workers

June 29, 2017

Artificial intelligence offers opportunities for engineers, but, according to Kai-Fu Lee, chairman and chief executive of Sinovation Ventures, it will eliminate many jobs, as I previously reported.

However, researchers Martha Ross and Natalie Holmes at Brookings have investigated ways that displaced workers might be helped. They studied 78.9 million adults aged 25 to 64 in 130 locations. They identified 11.3 million who were out of work but might be interested in or benefit from workforce development assistance. (They excluded people receiving retirement or disability benefits, most students, and likely stay-at-home parents with employed spouses.)

Ross and Holmes identified eight programs that might help:

  • bridge programs to prepare people for further education and training,
  • transitional jobs programs that provide short-term subsidized employment,
  • social enterprises that combine nonprofit and market-driven approaches,
  • job-search assistance and counseling through job centers and other employment programs,
  • sector initiatives that identify workforce needs in a given industry and location,
  • two-generation programs that link job training for parents with early childhood education,
  • apprenticeships that combine paid employment with on-the-job training, and
  • ASAP (Accelerated Study in Associate Programs), designed by the City University of New York to increase the graduation rate of low-income community college students.

Ross and Holmes evaluate the applicability of these programs across seven groups of out-of-work people:

  • young, less educated and diverse people;
  • less educated prime-age people;
  • diverse less educated people eying retirement;
  • motivated and moderately educated younger people;
  • moderately educated older people;
  • highly educated and engaged younger people; and
  • highly educated older people.

They write that young, less educated, and diverse people could benefit from all eight programs. They cite as an example “Patricia,” a 25-year-old single mother who speaks Spanish at home and wants to work outside the home now that her children are of school age.

Less educated prime-age people could benefit from all but the ASAP program. The offer as an example “Joseph,” a 51-year-old white man with a high-school diploma who lost his job in construction in his economically deptessed area two years ago.

And motivated and moderately educated younger people could benefit from all but transitional jobs and social enterprises. They cite as an example “Anna,” a 31-year-old single mother who quit her job as a home health aide to study to become a practical nurse.

Many groups, they find, can benefit from job-search assistance and counseling, including less-educated people nearing retirement, moderately educated older people, highly educated and engaged younger people, and highly educated older people. In this last category they cite “Leonard” as an example. He last worked as an accountant three years. His wife makes enough to support them both; he is not looking for a job now but would like to work if the right opportunity came along.

If Lee at Sinovation Ventures is right these programs will be of limited value. AI will not convert artisans into assembly-line workers, as in the industrial revolution, or typists into computer operators, as in the computer revolution. Governments will pay displaced workers to perform what he calls “service jobs of love”—such as accompanying an older person to a doctor’s appointment or mentoring children. “The volunteer service jobs of today, in other words, may turn into the real jobs of the future,” he writes.

However, the programs identified by the Brookings researchers are worth exploring, especially by local leaders who can, as Ross puts it, “…better understand who in their community wants or needs work and which strategies are best suited for connecting their diverse out-of-work residents to employment.”

Explore an interactive report of the Brookings research here.

About the Author

Rick Nelson | Contributing Editor

Rick is currently Contributing Technical Editor. He was Executive Editor for EE in 2011-2018. Previously he served on several publications, including EDN and Vision Systems Design, and has received awards for signed editorials from the American Society of Business Publication Editors. He began as a design engineer at General Electric and Litton Industries and earned a BSEE degree from Penn State.

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