Table of Contents
Preface
Work as we know it is shifting rapidly. Automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and emerging technologies are changing the way we work and the work we do. Technology promises to boost economic growth, create new ways to make money, and unleash productivity and creativity. Yet the benefits of these gains do not apply equally to everyone. Changes to the economy due to automation will disproportionately hit women, people of color, and workers with less education and economic stability. Without purposeful effort, progress risks leaving too many workers behind.
Mayors, city leaders, activists, educators, and employers across the country want to know what to do about these concerns. They want the benefits of technological progress to be broadly shared, and they want to create workforces that are prepared for the changes ahead. To date, there has been widespread media attention on the challenges of new technology, including automation, and the income volatility it can introduce—yet few concrete, generalizable solutions have emerged from current studies and discussions.
This report examines how three cities—Phoenix, Indianapolis, and South Bend—are preparing for the work of the future. Like most communities around the country, the three cities highlighted in this report are just beginning to address the challenge of automation. The steps they have taken, including the areas in which they are experimenting or seeing progress, as well as the gaps that remain, offer instructive lessons for leaders around the country.
These case studies document the lessons that New America has learned with these cities over the past year through our ShiftLabs program.1 New America launched ShiftLabs in the spring of 2018 as a design lab and pilot program, with a mission to empower workers through community action to respond to automation. To date, New America has organized ShiftLabs in Phoenix, Indianapolis, and the South Bend-Elkhart region. In each region, we brought together key stakeholders from across sectors, mapping automation trends to the specific skills profile of each city and identifying priorities for action. Through our engagement in Phoenix, Indianapolis, and South Bend, we have catalyzed, promoted, and assisted with community-led innovations that connect workers to careers, skills, and support. The goal of this report is to share our experiences and identify promising initiatives.
SHIFTLABS
What is it?
In the spring of 2018, New America launched ShiftLabs, in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation, as a design lab and pilot program. ShiftLabs responds to the changing landscape of work by connecting community leaders across sectors. Through ShiftLabs, New America works with communities to diagnose local automation risk, consider potential responses, build a long-term vision of economic vibrancy, and design and implement new ways to connect workers to emerging opportunities. A typical ShiftLabs design workshop might bring together several mayors, members of leadership from major employers, innovative educators, entrepreneurs, worker training providers, philanthropists, artists, and other creative community leaders. In 2019, New America launched Rural ShiftLabs, which expanded the work to rural communities and smaller towns in order to examine the myriad challenges and opportunities confronting rural communities across the country.
Where is it?
To date, New America has organized ShiftLabs in Phoenix, Indianapolis, and South Bend, and is convening a pilot in Detroit. In Phoenix, New America brought more than 40 regional leaders together with national CEOs and donors for a day-long discussion and series of human-centered design sessions, led by then-mayor of Phoenix Greg Stanton, Arizona State University president Michael Crow, and New America Chief Executive Officer Anne-Marie Slaughter. New America published a first-of-its-kind analysis of the automation potential of jobs in the Phoenix region, which generated widespread print and radio media coverage.2 In May 2018, New America convened 55 leaders in Indianapolis.
In December 2018, Rural ShiftLabs began work in northern Indiana. We focused on Elkhart and Goshen, areas reported by Brookings to be the third highest at risk in the nation for automation-related job change and loss.3 In 2019, we will extend Rural ShiftLabs' work to northwest Arkansas, the 11-county region of southern Indiana, and southern West Virginia.
What’s the outcome?
Through the ShiftLabs process, we seek out local partners; engage workers; provide data-driven technical assistance; facilitate community design labs; and co-lead efforts to help communities expand, create, or consolidate programs and policies to connect their residents to social and economic opportunities in the face of automation. Our hands-on approach is not meant to yield a one-size-fits-all solution or series of meetings. Rather, by bringing together leaders from industry, policy, philanthropy, civil society, culture, and technology, ShiftLabs is meant to harnesses each region’s strengths, help communities identify emerging jobs, and prepare workers to do them. The convenings have created new momentum in each region to prepare for automation, and have generated ongoing activities to prepare workers for tech-enabled work.
For example, in Indianapolis, New America is working on three initiatives with ShiftLab participants:
- “Credentializing” certifications for the start-up experience of entrepreneurial, vocational workers, makers, and creators;
- Identifying innovative ways to address social barriers to participating in the future of work; and
- Partnering with local leaders to design tech-enabled training tools for tradespeople and agro-talent in the face of increased automation.
In Phoenix, New America is expanding an existing program to help first-time entrepreneurs build credit, identify new sources of capital, and hire new employees. In all of the ShiftLabs locations, community-driven priority setting has generated enthusiasm about tackling the overwhelming, multisector problems that automation may create.
Citations
- Kristin Sharp, Molly Kinder, and Rachel Korberg, “Announcing ShiftLabs: A Community Design Lab on the Future of Work,” New America, February 27, 2018, source.
- Molly Kinder, Automation Potential for Jobs in Phoenix: An Economic Analysis of the Phoenix Metropolitan Area (Washington, D.C: New America, April 19, 2018), source.
- Mark Muro, Robert Maxim, and Jacob Whiton, Automation and Artificial Intelligence: How Machines Are Affecting People and Places (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, January 24, 2019), source.