EMBARGOED UNTIL 4:30 PM ET, DECEMBER 20, 2016
of new apprenticeship opportunities across the country in all major industry sectors in October
2016.^65
Strategy #3: Aid Workers in the Transition and Empower Workers to Ensure Broadly Shared Growth
As AI-driven automation changes the economy, empowered workers can be one of the Nation’s
greatest assets. They can drive and spread innovation, lift consumer demand, and invest in the
next generation.^66 This strategy explores how to ensure that workers and job seekers are able to
pursue the job opportunities for which they are best qualified, able to bounce back successfully
from job loss, and be well-positioned to ensure they receive an appropriate return for their work
in the form of rising wages.
Modernize and strengthen the social safety net
Changes to how people work and the dislocation of some workers due to automation heightens
the need for a robust safety net to ensure that people can still make ends meet, retrain, and
potentially transition careers. That means strengthening critical supports such as unemployment
insurance, Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and putting in place new programs such as wage
insurance and emergency aid for families in crisis. It also means exploring whether programs
such as Trade Adjustment Assistance should be expanded to help those displaced by automation.
In addition, with the rise of part-time and contingent work, and a more mobile workforce in
which individuals do not spend their entire career at a single company, policymakers will need to
ensure that workers can access retirement, health care, and other benefits whether or not they get
them on the job. For example, the Affordable Care Act expanded eligibility for Medicaid and
reformed individual health insurance market to ensure that Americans who do not get coverage
on the job can still find affordable, high-quality coverage, while simultaneously introducing
reforms to improve coverage for people who are offered coverage at work.
Strengthen Unemployment Insurance
(^65) The White House, “Fact Sheet: Investing More than $50 Million through ApprenticeshipUSA to Expand Proven
Pathways onto the Middle Class.”
(https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsreleases/WhiteHouseFactSheet-ApprenticeshipUSA-
FY2016.pdf)
(^66) Ragnhild Balsvik, "Is labor mobility a channel for spillovers from multinationals? Evidence from Norwegian
manufacturing," The Review of Economics and Statistics 93.1: 285 - 297, 2011; April M. Franco and Matthew F.
Mitchell, "Covenants not to compete, labor mobility, and industry dynamics." Journal of Economics & Management
Strategy 17.3: 581 - 606, 2008; Florence Honore, “From Common Ground to Breaking New Ground: Founding
Teams’ Prior Shared Experience and Start-up Performance.” Univ. of Minnesota, 2014; Council of Economic
Advisers, “Labor Market Monopsony: Trends Consequences, and Policy Responses,” 2016; Council of Economic
Advisers, “Worker Voice in a Time of Rising Inequality,” 2015; The White House, “Economic Report of the
President,” Chapter 4. February 2016 (http://go.wh.gov/dM4yPt).