Reflections on the Shift Commission’s Predictions on the Future of Work, Five Years Later

The future is notoriously hard to predict. Forecasters often end up missing trends that seem obvious in retrospect or getting caught off guard by the unexpected. Yet when it comes to the future of work, planning ahead is key to protecting livelihoods and building a resilient, inclusive economy.

In 2017, more than 100 national experts in technology, business, academia, and policy convened to imagine what work in America would look like in one or two decades. Led by Anne-Marie Slaughter of New America and Roy Bahat of Bloomberg Beta, the Shift Commission on Work, Workers, and Technology was created, surveying more than a thousand Americans, examining potential scenarios, and making recommendations to help society prepare.

Five years later, in a much-changed world, thought leaders met to revisit the report and consider what the commission got right, what it didn’t see coming and what the future might hold from today’s vantage point. Here are some takeaways from a conversation led by Bahat, Slaughter, and New America Future of Work Fellow Shalin Jyotishi from February 2023.

The employer’s role in society needs reimagining.
A key question from the report still resonates: “If large employers are no longer islands of security and stability, what will replace them?” Kevin Delaney, CEO and editor in chief of Charter, noted that employees’ needs and demands have only intensified in recent years around everything from child care to mental health support to corporate activism. “How do we have a common understanding and expectation of what employers should provide?” he asked. “And how do we make sure that the government and our shared communal responsibility for these areas are defined and fully realized as well?” Slaughter, CEO of New America, added that the nation is still in the thick of examining alternatives to an employer-centric model, from guilds to worker associations to new ways of delivering benefits.

Issues around work don’t fit neatly within traditional political coalitions.
The Shift Commission predicted that technological changes could affect people across every demographic and societal sector, disrupting typical “left-right” blocs. Advances in artificial intelligence may automate white-collar jobs even faster than expected. “We are in a moment where there is real realignment,” noted Danielle Allen, a Harvard professor and New America board member who ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2022. She said that renewed attention to community wealth creation and industrial policy is upending traditional policy positions, for example.

Older workers are the fastest-growing segment of the workforce.
During the pandemic, many older workers left the workforce to become caregivers or avoid health risks, yet that shift was short-lived. Jed Kolko, the undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs in the U.S. Department of Commerce, said, “one of the most surprising trends coming out of the pandemic is that workers aged 55 to 64 are now, if anything, more likely to be working than they were prior.” As the Shift Commission report predicted, this population is more likely to work in freelance, consulting, or gig economy roles and at be risk of displacement by automation.

A global pandemic reshaped the world of work.
No one could predict that COVID-19 would dramatically accelerate a shift to remote and hybrid work and alter geographic patterns. In 2017, commissioners observed that inequality between the richest cities and other areas was increasing and that fewer workers were relocating across long distances. When the pandemic hit, remote work upended those trends: “It changes how we work, it changes how we talk, it changes where people live,” said Derek Thompson, staff writer at The Atlantic. Many people left cities for the suburbs or other states, and business travel declined. “The ripple effects go very wide, and it can be hard to predict exactly what they’re going to be,” Thompson said.

Automation of knowledge work has moved faster than that of physical labor.
The Shift Commission said that artificial intelligence would affect both blue- and white-collar workers, but most expected workers in retail and transportation to feel the effects of automation first. In fact, “these are some of the jobs that might change the least, at least in the short- to medium-term,” said Pamela Mishkin, a researcher at OpenAI. One reason that self-driving cars and delivery drones haven’t proliferated is underestimating the “last-mile problem.” As Thompson put it, “sometimes it takes a lot more breakthrough intelligence to take something that’s 95 percent complete and make it truly 100 percent complete.” Meanwhile, ChatGPT and other generative AI models quickly moved from “being sort of useful and actually usable in so many different contexts,” Mishkin said. “That both highlights their promise to the economy and also risks to jobs.”

Organized labor experienced a resurgence.
After decades of decline, unionization efforts accelerated across a variety of industries. “We didn’t anticipate that organized labor, which we thought of as an important historical force, would become as fresh and as relevant as it’s become,” said Bahat, head of Bloomberg Beta. And Allen observed that workers are concerned not only about protecting jobs from automation, but also about the quality of roles in terms of wages, opportunities for advancement, and work-life balance. Compared to the past, she said, unions “have come a long way. There has been a lot of diversification, and there’s a lot of commitment to integrity.”

Concerns about labor demand were supplanted by questions about labor supply.
Five years ago, leaders focused on what would happen to workers when firms needed less labor. Since then, unemployment cratered, and talent became more scarce and costly. Reasons for the reversal, according to Kolko, include an aging population, less immigration, and the fact that caregivers and those with health risks stepped back from the labor market. “Whether that is just about the pandemic and a temporary shift or whether this is a permanent pivot, time will tell,” he said.

Based on the last five years, participants made predictions for how the future of work would unfold. Some foretold a revolution in education that includes technology-enabled continuous learning and flexible credentials that open jobs to qualified workers without college degrees. Others argued that the nation will make progress in addressing the lack of affordable child care and quality jobs for caregivers. Technologists expected conversations around equity and responsibility in the use of AI. And some anticipated an expansion of roles that invest in human flourishing and a reckoning over self-worth and meaning, given the changing nature of work.

Yet even for the experts, the future is still under construction. As Slaughter put it, “If the Shift Commission teaches us anything, it’s that in 2028, we’ll be looking back thinking, ‘God, we could have never imagined that.’”