Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer says the robots aren’t coming for your paycheck — and she’s betting big that artificial intelligence will make more Americans upwardly mobile, not unemployed.
In a Fox Business interview airing Labor Day weekend, the Oregon Republican-turned-cabinet-chief dismissed anxiety about mass layoffs as AI spreads from factory floors to office cubicles.
“There should be no threat of AI displacing the American worker,” Chavez-DeRemer told Fox Business.
“What we’re hearing on the ground is AI is here to stay,” she added.
“The President wants the United States to be the leader in AI, to win that AI race.”
The rosy portrait comes as corporate executives have warned that AI will likely reduce employment rolls in key white collar fields — with some doomsayers predicting a bloodbath of mass layoffs.
Chavez-DeRemer, confirmed in March with bipartisan support, argued AI will take the drudgery out of tasks and help workers reach higher-pay roles supervising and operating the new tech.
“I’ve been through companies where AI is assisting the American worker,” she said, describing a plant that replaced manual carbon-fiber coiling with 3-D printing.
“Now those workers are reskilled and upskilled, and now they’re running the line.”
The secretary’s rosy outlook comes as the administration rolls out an aggressive pro-AI agenda that seeks to assert US dominance in the technology, while keeping Main Street on board.
In April, President Trump signed an executive order making “AI literacy and proficiency” a national priority, directing agencies to seed K-12 classrooms, teacher training and apprenticeships with AI content and to expand pathways for lifelong learners.
The White House followed in July with “America’s AI Action Plan,” which casts American workers as the policy’s center of gravity and tees up new measures to track AI’s labor-market impact, expand apprenticeships and stand up an “AI Workforce Research Hub” at the Labor Department.
Last week, the Labor Department issued guidance urging states to use federal funding for AI-skills training — from prompting and evaluating AI outputs to basic cybersecurity tied to responsible use.
The memo explicitly ties the push to the April executive order and spells out how youth, adult and dislocated-worker programs can weave AI into short-term classes, credentials and work-based learning.
Leading tech and business figures have been sounding alarms that AI could wipe out up to half of all white-collar jobs within just a few years, with CEOs from Anthropic, Ford, Amazon and others openly bracing for mass cuts.
Experts like Dario Amodei and Kai-Fu Lee warn of a looming “white-collar bloodbath,” with entry-level roles in finance, law, consulting and tech especially vulnerable.
Former Google chief Eric Schmidt predicts most coding work will soon be done by AI, while Amazon’s Andy Jassy says corporate head-counts will shrink as efficiency improves.
The IMF estimates 300 million jobs worldwide could be disrupted, urging governments to pour resources into retraining to cushion the blow.
Even AI champions like Sam Altman admit that “jobs are definitely going to go away, full stop,” warning that the transition will be painful before any new opportunities emerge.
One study suggests this could already be happening for entry-level workers, whose skills are the easiest to replicate with AI. Economists found that employment for young software engineers dropped 20% between late 2022 and early 2023, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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