As artificial intelligence rapidly reshapes the American economy, a new bipartisan nonprofit is launching an ambitious effort to prevent widespread job displacement through education, training, and policy reform—addressing what experts warn could destabilize democracy if left unmanaged.
RAISE US, founded by former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and former Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb, is deploying more than $500 million to pilot programs designed to help workers transition to new careers in an increasingly automated economy. The initiative reflects growing alarm among policymakers and economists about the scale of AI-driven disruption and the inadequacy of existing social safety nets to manage it.
The Scale of the Crisis
The stakes are substantial. An April analysis by the Boston Consulting Group estimated that roughly half of U.S. jobs will be reshaped by AI over the next few years, with as many as 25 million jobs potentially eliminated in the U.S. over the next five years. Goldman Sachs, in a March estimate, separately projected that a quarter of U.S. work hours could be automated by AI. The analysis warned that AI could fill roads with driverless trucks, create factories staffed by robots, and supplant office workers, lawyers and doctors.
These projections carry immediate real-world consequences. Since the start of Trump's second term, manufacturing has shed 68,000 jobs and the trucking transportation sector has cut 28,300 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—even as AI-related investments have boosted overall economic growth.
Raimondo, the former Democratic governor of Rhode Island who shaped AI policy as the Biden administration's commerce secretary, articulated the democratic stakes in stark terms: "We're talking about a certain level of unemployment that could destabilize our country and our democracy. If you want to lead the world in AI, you have to take action to make sure our democracy doesn't crumble."
A Public-Private Strategy
Rather than waiting for federal action, RAISE US is partnering directly with states and major employers to test new approaches. The nonprofit is initially working with officials in Arkansas, Connecticut, Maryland and Utah, alongside anchor partners including Amazon, Microsoft, Anthropic, the OpenAI Foundation and Bank of America. Additional employers involved include UPS, General Motors, Eli Lilly, Mastercard, AMD, Cisco and IBM.
The group aims to develop policies that connect schools more closely to employers, ensuring that layoffs are replaced by opportunities for new jobs with potentially higher incomes. It is also exploring changes to corporate taxes and other incentives designed to keep people working.
The advisory board reflects the initiative's bipartisan ambitions and technical depth, including former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, billionaire investment manager Stephen Schwarzman, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, and economists David Autor, Erik Brynjolfsson and Raj Chetty.
The Institutional Gap
Experts warn that existing institutions are unprepared for the speed and scope of AI disruption. Vivienne Ming, a neuroscientist and author of "Robot-Proof: When Machines Have all the Answers, Build Better People," highlighted a critical mismatch: "AI is now disrupting multiple sectors simultaneously, faster than any institution can respond."
Ming acknowledged that economists argue AI wealth could generate demand offsetting job losses, but emphasized that the skills required in an AI economy extend far beyond traditional trades. "The skills that matter in an AI economy go beyond professions such as plumbing or construction and involve curiosity and intellectual flexibility," she said. "Neither our education system nor our labor policies are building the foundational human capital that AI-era work actually requires."
This institutional lag represents a critical vulnerability. The 20th-century social safety net—unemployment insurance and four-year college degrees—appears fundamentally misaligned with the scope, scale, and speed of AI-driven transformation.
Federal Action Unlikely in Near Term
Raimondo expressed skepticism about near-term congressional action, stating: "I don't have a lot of hope for bold action by Congress in the next few years on this issue, and I don't think we can wait a few years." Instead, she proposed using states as laboratories for testing ideas that Congress could later adopt as national policy, citing historical precedent for federal adoption of state-level innovations.
Holcomb framed the challenge in terms of economic inclusion: "Good things tend to happen when you convert have-nots into haves."
The initiative stands in contrast to the Trump administration's public posture on AI job displacement. When asked Tuesday ahead of touring a Mack Trucks factory in Pennsylvania whether AI could cause truckers to lose their jobs, President Donald Trump responded, "Right now, they're not," adding that labor shortages rather than displacement represent the current challenge.
Why This Matters:
This initiative addresses a fundamental tension in the digital economy: rapid technological advancement that generates wealth for investors and consumers, but threatens the livelihoods and economic security of millions of workers. Without proactive intervention—through education reform, tax policy adjustments, and labor market coordination—AI automation risks concentrating gains among capital owners while displacing workers faster than they can retrain. The RAISE US effort represents an acknowledgment that market forces alone cannot manage this transition, and that protecting both workers and democratic stability requires coordinated public-private action. The scale of potential job losses—25 million over five years—and the demonstrated inadequacy of existing safety nets underscore why this work cannot wait for federal consensus. Whether state-level experimentation can generate models robust enough to address the challenge remains an open question with profound implications for inequality and social cohesion.