Congress Considers Legislation on AI Labor Impact and Data Collection

Action: A bipartisan pair of senators have introduced the Workforce Transparency Act (the Act), which would direct the Department of Labor (DOL) to collect and publish data provided voluntarily by public and private employers about the use of AI in the workplace.¹ This is only one of several bills on AI labor impact in Congress, including one for mandatory data collection and job loss reporting. Several leading AI companies have endorsed the new bill.

Trusted Insights for What’s Ahead^®

• Policymakers, business leaders, and educators alike are closely tracking workplace AI adoption, particularly implications for employer skills requirements and overall employment trends. However, data limitations make this a challenging question to study.
• According to its sponsors, the Act would improve workforce development, education policy, and economic planning by providing a national dataset with consistent reporting standards.
• Specific datapoints for the system would be determined through a DOL rulemaking process but may include information about what tasks are conducted using AI, geographic information about where workers are using AI, age ranges of workers using AI, and trends in AI usage over time. Data collected through the system would be aggregated and anonymized to protect privacy and avoid sharing confidential business information.
• The Act represents a voluntary industry-supported approach to monitoring AI labor impacts at a time when Congress is also considering more prescriptive proposals that would require disclosure of AI-related job losses. Last Fall, a bipartisan pair of senators, including one of the Act’s sponsors, introduced the AI-Related Job Impacts Clarity Act (S. 3108),² which would require covered entities to report AI-related job impacts, including layoffs, hiring, unfilled positions, and retraining substantially due to AI. DOL would then publish quarterly reports and underlying data.
• Congress is also considering another bipartisan bill, the AI Workforce PREPARE Act (S. 3339)³ which would revise certain surveys to include AI adoption and workforce-impact questions and would amend the WARN Act to require employers to disclose when AI was a substantial factor in a WARN-covered mass layoff, including the type and use of AI, the estimated share of employment loss attributable to AI, and any upskilling or retraining steps taken before the layoff.
• Yet another bipartisan bill, the Economy of the Future Commission Act, would establish a bicameral commission in Congress “to study how AI is transforming the American economy and develop consensus-driven policy recommendations for Congress.”⁴
• Some of these proposals likely raise greater business concerns than the Act because they focus more directly on job losses and, in some cases, mandatory employer disclosures. The new bill is narrower and focuses on voluntary, aggregated reporting about AI use, tasks, skills, and workforce trends rather than requiring employers to attribute specific job losses to AI.
• DOL and other agencies regularly use voluntary data collection to gather information about important policy questions. For example, DOL’s O*NET database contains voluntarily submitted data on the skills, knowledge, and other characteristics for approximately 1,000 occupations.
• What this means for business:
  • AI governance and reporting readiness:
    • The Act reflects growing policymaker interest in understanding how businesses are deploying AI and how adoption affects workers. Companies using AI in the workplace may want to ensure they have internal visibility into where AI tools are being used, what tasks they support or replace, which employee groups are affected, and how AI use varies across roles, worksites, and business units.
    • Because other proposals focus more directly on AI-related layoffs, employers should also consider how they would substantiate any future claims about whether AI was a substantial factor in workforce reductions or changes in hiring, retraining, or job design.
    • Employers with stronger AI inventories and governance processes would be better positioned to participate in reporting, respond to future information requests, and benchmark their practices against emerging public data.
  • Workforce planning and skills strategy: A voluntary national dataset on workplace AI adoption could influence workforce development funding, education and training programs, and future labor policy. If the Act passes, businesses should monitor the rulemaking process to understand how public findings could shape expectations around reskilling, job design, and responsible AI implementation. Employers may also benefit from using any DOL dataset to identify changing skill needs, compare adoption trends across industries or regions, and inform talent development strategies.
  • Legislative trajectory and disclosure risk: Businesses should not view the Act as the outer bound of congressional interest in AI workforce data. Other pending proposals would require covered employers to disclose AI-related layoffs or include AI-specific information in WARN notices. Companies deploying AI should begin developing internal processes to document where AI is used, how it affects job tasks and staffing decisions, what assumptions are used to attribute workforce changes to AI, and what retraining or redeployment options are offered. Even if the voluntary bill is more likely to attract industry support, the broader legislative environment suggests growing pressure for more formal reporting on AI’s workforce impacts.