Bipartisan Senators Push for Federal Data on AI
WASHINGTON – U.S. Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-VA) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) today led a bipartisan group of senators in urging the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Census Bureau to expand data collection and public reporting on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the U.S. workforce. As AI technologies are rapidly developed, deployed, and integrated across industries, the senators warned that policymakers and researchers will increasingly need reliable federal data to understand how these changes are reshaping the labor market – and how lawmakers, workers and businesses should respond.
U.S. Sens. Jim Banks (R-IN), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Mike Rounds (R-SD), and Todd Young (R-IN) also signed the letter.
“We write to strongly urge the federal government’s statistical agencies to prioritize the collection, analysis, and dissemination of high-quality, timely data regarding artificial intelligence’s (AI) impact on the labor market,” the senators wrote.
The senators continued, “Over the last several years, the enhanced capabilities of artificial intelligence have resulted in its increased application and adoption across many and varied industries and occupations. Predictive machine learning systems and generative AI have already created evolutions within the labor market due to those tools’ ability to perform tasks and functions that ordinarily require human intelligence. The emergence of autonomous technologies, including agentic AI and robotics integrating AI, present opportunities for a dramatic shift in the nature of work.”
“However, reporting from across the private sector, academia, and media depict an uncertain picture of artificial intelligence’s current and potential impact on the workforce, with some use cases demonstrating a high probability of job disruption and others making the case for employment growth. Recent reporting has generated an increased focus on artificial intelligence’s effect on new labor entrants. As such, it is imperative that the federal government serves as an agile, objective, and reliable source of information regarding the significant labor market changes that this technological advancement presents,” the senators stressed.
Currently, the federal government’s data, research, and measurement on AI lags behind non-governmental labor market data. In their letter, the senators outlined several opportunities where surveys can be expanded to better understand the impact of artificial intelligence, including supplemental surveys focused on AI in the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS); the addition of questions on the occupations and wages of both new hires and workers who separate from employers and how many hires, job postings, and layoffs are directly related to the business’ use of AI in the monthly and annual Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS); and the addition of questions related to AI in the National Longitudinal Survey.
The letter builds on the AI Jobs Clarity Act,legislation that Warner and Hawley introduced last fall that would require major companies and federal agencies to report AI-related layoffs to the Department of Labor to be compiled in a publicly available report.
Read the full letter here or below.