The U.S. Senate is looking for a clearer picture of what artificial intelligence is actually doing to American jobs before lawmakers decide how to respond.
That was the focus of a July 29 hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety, where lawmakers examined AI’s impact on workers alongside the proposed AI Workforce PREPARE Act.
The hearing brought together workforce, economic research and labor policy experts, including EmployIndy CEO Ken Clark, Indiana Business Research Center Director Carol Rogers, Mercatus Center labor economist Liya Palagashvili, Better Business Bureau of Southern Colorado CEO Jonathan Liebert and Opportunity@Work research executive Justin Heck.
The bill, introduced by Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) in December 2025 with bipartisan cosponsors, is designed to improve how the federal government tracks AI adoption, job displacement, changing skills and workforce demand. It remains an introduced bill and has been referred to the HELP Committee.
The Bill Would Track How AI Changes Jobs
The AI Workforce PREPARE Act would direct the federal government to collect more information about how AI is being implemented and how that affects workers.
One provision would create a voluntary program through the Bureau of Labor Statistics for AI developers, companies deploying AI and other private entities to share anonymized information about AI use in the workforce.
The legislation also calls for federal surveys to be improved so they can capture AI adoption and its effects on employment. The goal is to produce better information about whether AI is automating tasks, augmenting workers or creating demand for different skills.
That distinction matters because a job title can remain unchanged while the work involved in that job changes significantly.
AI-Related Layoffs Could Become Easier To Track
One of the bill’s more notable provisions would change what companies have to disclose when AI contributes substantially to a mass layoff covered by the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.
Under the proposal, affected employers would have to identify that AI was a substantial factor, describe the type and use of AI involved, estimate what percentage of the employment loss was attributable to it and disclose whether workers were offered upskilling or retraining before the layoffs. Employers could satisfy the requirement through a good-faith estimate.
The change would give policymakers a more specific way to distinguish AI-related employment losses from layoffs caused by other business conditions. It would not require companies to prove that AI caused every individual job loss. Instead, it would create a reporting mechanism for cases in which AI was considered a substantial factor in a covered mass layoff.
A New AI Workforce Research Hub
The proposal would also establish an Artificial Intelligence Workforce Research Hub within the Department of Labor. The hub would work with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis to study AI’s effects on workers and produce recurring analysis and scenarios showing how different levels of AI impact could affect employment.
The legislation specifically calls for short- and medium-term occupational forecasts that account for uncertainty rather than presenting a single prediction about where employment is headed. That could give policymakers, workforce organizations and educators more information to work with when deciding which skills and training programs to support.
The Senate Is Also Looking At The Data Infrastructure
The bill calls for the Labor Department to work with states, local workforce boards, employers and other organizations to identify useful workforce data covering areas such as job vacancies, hiring, earnings, education and skills. The department would then report to Congress on how that information could be standardized, securely collected and made available to researchers. The bill also calls for federal standards for producing and reporting trusted AI-related workforce data, while emphasizing voluntary and consensus-driven implementation.
That focus reflects one of the central problems raised during the hearing: AI’s effects may vary considerably by occupation, industry and location, making broad national employment figures an imperfect way to understand what is happening on the ground.
Lawmakers Are Still Working From An Incomplete Picture
The bill recognizes that AI could automate or augment some tasks while increasing demand for other occupations and skills. It argues that better data is needed to anticipate both worker displacement and potential shortages.
That approach was reflected in the testimony from Rogers, who warned against relying on simple predictions about widespread job losses and pointed to differences across occupations, wages, industries and regions.
For policymakers, the practical problem is straightforward: training programs and workforce policies are difficult to target when the government cannot clearly see which tasks are changing, which employers are using AI and where workers are actually being displaced. The AI Workforce PREPARE Act is an attempt to build that picture before making bigger policy decisions.
For now, however, it is still only a proposal. Congress has not passed the bill, and the legislation remains with the Senate HELP Committee.
