AI Will Expose the Weaknesses in America’s Workforce System
A couple of weeks ago, Gina Raimondo argued in the New York Times that artificial intelligence could trigger the next major economic shock unless the country builds a modern talent system to help workers move from declining jobs into emerging ones.
She deserves credit for telling an uncomfortable truth before most of the country is ready to hear it. Too many leaders still talk about AI as if the disruption will be gradual or mostly someone else’s problem.
She is naming a challenge the country still has not fully come to terms with. We are not ready for an AI-driven labor shock. Getting ready will require employers to step in more directly and workers to have far clearer paths into growing jobs.
What I want to add is what that challenge looks like from inside a state trying to build the kind of talent system she is calling for. The country does not just need a better workforce agenda. It needs a better operating model for making that agenda real.
The country does not suffer from a shortage of workforce ideas. It suffers from a shortage of systems capable of carrying them out.
A System Challenge
For years, policymakers have rolled out grants, tax credits, and public-private initiatives meant to pull employers closer to education and workforce systems. Many of those ideas were reasonable, and some were ideas I supported or helped shape. Where they struggled was in execution, because the talent system carries far more friction than most policy conversations are willing to admit.
I have had employers tell me, without exaggeration, that it would cost them more in staff time and administrative hassle to secure an incentive than the incentive itself was worth. That kind of friction is not incidental. It tells you something is wrong with the design.
My experience in Colorado has been that government, higher education, and employers operate on different cycle times, speak different languages, and are rewarded for different things. That mismatch shows up everywhere. Business lives by customer demand, execution, measurable return, and the next quarter. Education and government move through compliance structures, committee processes, and annual planning cycles that operate on a very different rhythm.
There is also a cultural challenge that AI will not solve. In too many corners of government and postsecondary education, the current model is deeply hardwired. I once spoke with a group of educators about the need to build durable skills like problem solving, discernment, communication, and collaboration more intentionally into teaching. The response was immediate: When do I have time to do that? What other requirements are you going to cut?
That exchange gets at something deeper. Too often, needed change is experienced as one more burden on an already overloaded system. Add in accrediting bodies and administrative structures that protect long-standing assumptions about curriculum and pedagogy, and it becomes easier to see why adaptation comes slowly.
The challenge becomes easier to see when you look at what it takes to make one of these systems work.
Employer-Led Pathways
At Colorado Succeeds, in partnership with the Associated General Contractors and nearly two dozen construction employers, we have spent years convening competitors who chose to put aside old grievances and short-term rivalry to solve a larger talent problem. In Colorado alone, the construction industry needs more than 30,000 new skilled workers by 2030. It also needs project managers who understand both the craft side and the management side of the business.
That challenge could have produced another string of generic workforce meetings. Instead, it produced a talent pipeline built backward from actual employer demand.
The system now begins in high school through pre-apprenticeships where students build tiny homes, develop workplace habits, earn safety credentials, and gain early exposure to the trades through programs like Careers in Construction Colorado. Upon graduation, they can move directly into registered apprenticeships.
After earning their journeyworker’s license, they become eligible for a construction management associate degree at Emily Griffith Technical College, with their four-year apprenticeship counting for 45 credit hours. From there, they enter an eleven-month program, taking classes two nights a week while continuing to work. They study budgeting, estimating, forecasting, proposal writing, and talent management, then put those skills to work on the job the very next day.
Employers value these workers because they bring something rare: managerial potential grounded in lived experience. They know how a jobsite works, where problems tend to surface, and what it takes to keep work moving. They can communicate with crews because they understand the craft, and they can communicate with leadership because they understand the stakes. One employer told me that combination of field experience and management training is worth platinum in this business.
For the learner, the path matters just as much. It is a career ladder into and through a quality job. A high school diploma leads to apprenticeship. Apprenticeship leads to an associate degree. That degree stacks into a bachelor’s in construction management. The path builds earnings early and keeps postsecondary education open over time instead of demanding everything up front.
Why Did this Effort Work?
Three conditions mattered.
First, there was a neutral convener employers trusted, and the early stages of the work were designed around employer candor.
Employers rarely get enough space to speak plainly with one another about demand, pain points, and talent gaps without the conversation quickly shifting toward existing programs or institutional priorities. The goal was not to exclude other partners permanently. It was to ensure the employer voice was clear before the broader system began building around it.
Second, there was a disciplined process.
We used Talent Pipeline Management from the U.S. Chamber Foundation, which gave employers and partners a practical way to define demand, examine talent flows, identify breakdowns, and build shared solutions through repeatable steps.
Third, the work respected people’s time.
The employers in that room were not there for ceremony or symbolic consultation. They were there to solve a problem. That meant keeping the conversation focused, practical, and tied to decisions that would move the work forward.
This was not just a construction story. We are seeing the same pattern as the work expands into advanced manufacturing, life sciences, and aerospace. The industry changes. The conditions for progress do not.
A Future System
One lesson from this work is that progress often depends on trusted intermediaries that can translate across different worlds. Industry associations, chambers of commerce, and business-led nonprofits can play that role when they have credibility with employers and strong relationships across education and government. They are not a substitute for public investment, accountability, or policy reform. They are a way to make those tools usable in the real world.
That is the part of the workforce conversation that deserves more attention. Postsecondary and workforce reform is full of policy ideas and pilot programs. The real test comes later, when those ideas run into state agencies, institutions, and the everyday habits the system was built to protect.
We should keep pushing on modular learning, better labor-market data, apprenticeships, and stronger transitions for displaced workers. Public funding should pay much closer attention to outcomes. Employers will also need to play a more active role in shaping the talent pipelines they depend on.
But if we pour new money into the same machinery without changing how the system actually operates, the results will look familiar.
Raimondo is right that the country needs a new bargain. What that bargain will require, though, is more than shared aspiration. It will require operating models that can hold together across the real tensions between government, education, and employers.
We know more now than we did when factory jobs disappeared and millions of Americans were left to navigate economic change largely on their own. The real failure would be to see another transformation coming and still respond with systems too slow, too fragmented, and too self-protective to meet the moment.
