How AI May Reshape Career Pathways to Better Jobs and What Regional Pathway Health Tells Us

• In Event: Does AI Deliver? Evidence from Training Programs, the Workforce, and Career Pathways

Abstract

Debates about artificial intelligence (AI) and the labor market have largely focused on the future of college graduates and on which individual occupations will be disrupted. Far less attention is being paid to how AI will reshape economic mobility for workers without four-year degrees and across groups of jobs rather than individual jobs. Often left out of consideration is whether the pathways that connect those job groups will remain strong enough to support workers’ upward mobility, meet employers’ talent needs, and drive regional growth. This report shifts attention to a broader and often overlooked question: how AI may reshape the career pathways that support upward mobility, especially for workers who are Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs) rather than a four-year degree. We find that millions of STARs work in highly AI-exposed roles, including nearly 11 million in Gateway occupations that have historically served as critical stepping-stones to higher-wage work. Only about half of the pathways between Gateway and Destination occupations, roles offering higher wages and greater economic stability, remain free from high AI exposure. We argue that AI’s effects will depend not only on exposure, whether it automates or augments tasks, but also on whether it weakens or reinforces the pathways workers use to build skills and advance to higher wage opportunities. Because these pathways are regional in nature, workforce responses must also be locally grounded. Building on this prior work, our forthcoming research develops an empirical framework for measuring regional pathway health, i.e., the degree to which workers in a given occupation and region have viable options to advance along their career ladders given AI-driven disruption. Drawing on occupational data on exposure, job growth, and regional job posting data, we are constructing a Regional Pathway Health Index that captures the degree to which a worker has viable, skill-matched, and locally available opportunities to transition or advance.

Authors

• Joseph Henry Siegmund, Opportunity@work
  Presenting Author

• Shriya Reddy Methkupally, Brookings Institution
  Non-Presenting Co-Author