Register

December

12
2019

9:00 am EST - 2:45 pm EST

Past Event

Automation, labor market institutions, and the middle class

Thursday, December 12, 2019

9:00 am - 2:45 pm EST

Brookings Institution
Falk Auditorium

1775 Massachusetts Avenue N.W.
Washington, DC
20036

Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are changing the middle-class job market, but who will benefit, who will be hurt, and the scale of those changes is still unknown. In this 21st century market, the degree to which workers, their families, and their communities adapt to the new technologies of automation and AI will depend on how public policy, private institutions, and businesses evolve to support them.

On Thursday, December 12, the Future of the Middle Class Initiative at the Brookings Institution hosted an event focused on how advances in automation and AI affect and interact with labor force decisions and key labor market features such as minimum wages, the earned income tax credit, and unions. The event featured new scholarly research and keynote remarks from Senior Editor and Economics Columnist at The Economist Ryan Avent.

View summaries of each of paper presented at this conference here.

Presentation: A tale of two workers – The macroeconomics of automation

Presentation: Automation, organized labor, and the employment trajectories of workers in routine jobs- Evidence from U.S. panel data

Keynote address

Presentation: The evolution of technological substitution in low-wage labor markets

Agenda