Labor and jobs

Financial Times reporter Martin Wolf spotlights Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu’s latest book, “What Happened to Liberal Democracy?”, which he notes is "timely and thought-provoking,” and "an important call to arms.” In the book, Acemoglu explores his "grand idea of ‘working-class liberalism,’” writes Wolf. “This concept, he states, is built on experimentation and the freedoms of association and expression, is suspicious of excessive power, uses redistribution, allows the less fortunate to participate more fully, values growth, attempts to provide good jobs for everybody and values community, trust and the sharing of useful knowledge.”

In an article about AI’s impact on the job market, The Guardian’s Varsha Bansal highlights Prof. Paul Osterman’s new book, “Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment.” Bansal writes: “About 35% of the US workforce is already considered easily replaceable, according to his [Osterman’s] research. AI will only exacerbate this, he said. But not all jobs are in the same boat, and neither are their options for adapting, said MIT’s Osterman.” 

Ben Armstrong, executive director of the MIT Industrial Performance Center, speaks to The New York Times reporter Jack Ewing about humanoid robots being deployed to work in car factories. “Humanoids are a million-dollar solution to a one-hundred-dollar problem,” says Armstrong. “The prospect of humanoids to change the game in automotive is quite small.” 

Prof. Paul Osterman speaks to Forbes’ Courtney Connley-Hampton about his new book “Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment,” and how AI may exacerbate the disposable worker trend. “Your only source of power in the labor market is your human capital, your skill,” says Osterman. “Get as much skill as you can. You may end up having to change jobs and move around, but if you have valuable skills, that protects you.” 

Fox Business’ Eric Revell highlights MIT being named to the top five of LinkedIn’s list of the top colleges that give graduates the strongest career edge. “The report uses LinkedIn data to rank colleges based on five categories: job placement, internships and recruiter demand, career success, network strength and knowledge breadth,” writes Revell.  

Principal Research Scientist John Liu speaks to Manufacturing Dive’s Nathan Owens about MIT’s Technologist Advanced Manufacturing Program (TechAMP), a 12-month-long certificate program designed to "bring experienced technicians into leadership roles with a focus on advanced manufacturing needs.” Says Liu: "We’re looking at developing this elite workforce who bridges the gap. What we’re trying to do is upskill the technician.” 

Fortune reporter Preston Fore highlights Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee's warning that companies should not replace entry level jobs with AI. “[I]f you’re pulling back on your entry-level hiring, you are probably sacrificing future opportunities to learn and the skilled people of the future,” says McAfee. “You’re also turning off the spigot of the most enthusiastic power users of AI in your organization.”  

Research Scientist Maria Jesús Saénz discusses the benefits and barriers to companies adopting AI in their supply chains for a Financial Times article by reporter Lucy Colback. “If you are having humans change their process for automation in order to substitute themselves, this is a very perverse thing,” Saénz says. “They want to keep their salary and might boycott the AI. [They may] be algorithm averse.” 

Richard Locke, dean of MIT Sloan School of Management, speaks to Poets&Quants reporter Marc Ethier about Sloan’s new evening MBA program, designed for full-time workers. “There’s an incredibly rich population in the Boston-New England regional area who have the same grades, the same test scores, the same experience as our current MBA students,” says Locke. “The one exception is they don’t want to leave their jobs. They want to continue to work, but they want to actually get an MBA from a place like MIT Sloan. They want to accelerate their careers where they are.” 

Boston Business Journal’s Maya Shavit showcases MIT Sloan School of Management’s new evening Master of Business Administration degree, designed for full-time workers, which will welcome its first cohort in August 2027. “MIT has strong ties to so many firms and organizations in this ecosystem, but if we could actually be pumping out even more high-skilled, highly talented, ambitious future leaders in the local economy that’s only going to be good for the regional economy,” says Richard Locke, dean of MIT Sloan.  

Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Washington Post reporter Benjamin Guggenheim about his views on advancing AI, and how the technology might impact the labor market over the next decade. “What we saw at the end of ‘25 and the beginning of ‘26 was an acceleration. I think the agentic AI models are certainly much better in terms of a number of tasks, such as coding and other sort of simple cognitive tasks,” says Acemoglu. 

Bloomberg’s Daniel Moss features a paper by Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. David Autor that finds lower birthrates and aging populations between 1970 and 2020 have increased the average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per worker. “Our findings challenge the prevailing pessimism: lower birth rates, and the aging and shrinking populations they have produced, have raised rather than lowered GDP per worker during these decades,” says Acemoglu. 

In a Bloomberg article, reporter Robb Mandelbaum highlights the AI-Driven Enterprise Institute (AIDE), a new venture by senior lecturer Paul Cheek, which delivers an indexed ranking of how 337 S&P 500 companies are deploying AI and how their implementation and strategy compares to their competitors. “Everybody now needs to be bringing AI literacy into their organization,” Cheek says. “I want my students going in with a very adaptable mindset that best prepares them to apply AI.”

Bloomberg’s Catarina Saraiva reports on a new study by Profs. Daron Acemoglu and David Autor and graduate student Keelan Beirne, which finds that aging and shrinking populations raise, rather than lower, the country’s Gross Domestic Product per worker. “In cross-country data, declining birth rates lead to higher total factor productivity, larger capital stocks, a shift toward exports in high-tech industries, and more labor-saving patenting,” the authors write.