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Three years ago, robots, artificial intelligence (AI), and self-driving cars seemed to be coming fast. A widely cited study projected nearly half of all jobs in industrialized countries could soon be performed by robots or AI. In this context, the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future was commissioned in the spring of 2018, tasked with understanding the relationships between emerging technologies and work, to help shape public discourse around realistic expectations of technology, and to explore strategies to enable a future of shared prosperity.

Adopting new technology creates winners and losers and will continue to do so. Involvement of all stakeholders - including workers, businesses, investors, educational and social organizations, and government - can minimize the damage done to individuals and communities and help ensure that the jobs of the future offer benefits that are shared by all. [The authors] explore this inclusive approach by examining the institutional frameworks around work, including how education and training programs can be made more effective and inclusive, as well as new ways of empowering workers who may never have the protections afforded by traditional union structures. This report begins by documenting and diagnosing the challenges facing the U.S. labor market. Next, [the authors] survey the technological frontier to draw lessons about the pace and direction of change and its likely impacts on employment, skill demands, and opportunity. Finally, [the authors] synthesize insights from work and technology to consider how our policies and institutions should innovate to leverage technological and economic opportunities while surmounting the substantial challenges that lie ahead.

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This report argues that the world now stands on the cusp of a technological revolution in artificial intelligence and robotics that may prove as transformative for economic growth and human potential as were electrification, mass production, and electronic telecommunications in their eras. New and emerging technologies will raise aggregate economic output and boost the wealth of nations. Will these developments enable people to attain higher living standards, better working conditions, greater economic security, and improved health and longevity? The answers to these questions are not predetermined. They depend upon the institutions, investments, and policies that we deploy to harness the opportunities and confront the challenges posed by this new era. How can we move beyond unhelpful prognostications about the supposed end of work and toward insights that will enable policymakers, businesses, and people to better navigate the disruptions that are coming and underway? What lessons should we take from previous epochs of rapid technological change? How is it different this time? And how can we strengthen institutions, make investments, and forge policies to ensure that the labor market of the 21st century enables workers to contribute and succeed?

The MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future was convened in the spring of 2018. Its goals are to understand the relationships between emerging technologies and work, and to explore strategies to enable a future of shared prosperity. To help answer these questions, and to provide a framework for the Task Force's efforts over the next year, this report examines several aspects of the interaction between work and technology.

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Prior to the onset of the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID crisis, the industrialized world was undergoing rapid employment growth, so much so that The Economist magazine declared in May 2019, 'Most of the rich world is enjoying a jobs boom of unprecedented scope' (The Economist 2019). Despite these encouraging trends, a cross-national Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2018 found that majorities of citizens in advanced and emerging economies anticipated that robots and computers would probably or definitely take over many jobs, exacerbating inequality, and making it more difficult to find work (Wike and Stokes 2018). The COVID crisis has upended these predictions, bringing to an end the longest economic expansion in US history and causing a worldwide spike in unemployment. Ironically, technological advances generally, and automation specifically, had almost nothing to do with this reversal of fortune. Should we now stop worrying about technological unemployment and focus instead on conventional threats? Or are all prior bets simply off? In our view, the answer to both questions is no. The current COVID crisis makes the trajectory of automation's impact on employment more readily discernible, and what we see provides no grounds for setting aside our concerns. The COVID crisis appears poised to reshape labor markets along at least four axes: telepresence, urban de-densification, employment concentration in large firms, and general automation forcing. Although these changes will have longrun efficiency benefits, they will exacerbate economic pain in the short and medium terms for the least economically secure workers in our economy, particularly those in the rapidly growing but never-highly-paid personal services sector.

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