Automation, labor market institutions, and the middle class
Past Event
Welcome & Presentation: Automation – A guide for policymakers
Welcome & Presentation: Automation – A guide for policymakers
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
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.
Agenda
Welcome
Stephanie Aaronson
Senior Associate Director, Division of Research and Statistics - Federal Reserve Board
Presentation: Automation – A guide for policymakers
James Bessen
Executive Director, Technology & Policy Research Initiative - Boston University
Presentation: A tale of two workers – The macroeconomics of automation
Henry Siu
Professor - Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia
Faculty Research Fellow - NBER
Presentation: Automation, organized labor, and the employment trajectories of workers in routine jobs- Evidence from U.S. panel data
Keynote address
Ryan Avent
Senior Editor and Economics Columnist - The Economist
Presentation: The evolution of technological substitution in low-wage labor markets
Brian Phelan
Associate Professor and Driehaus Fellow, Department of Economics - DePaul University
Closing remarks
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