An AI-Ready Workforce Will Need ‘Durable Skills’

It's an axiom that technology creates more jobs than it eliminates. But those created jobs are often not filled by the same workers.

"You'll often hear people say, 'It's not AI that's going to take your job. It's someone who knows how to use AI that's going to take your job," Connecticut Sen. James Maroney told a Monday session on artificial intelligence and the workforce at NCSL's Legislative Summit.

"My friend Del. (Eva) Maldonado over here pointed out to me that that's missing an important fact: There are some jobs that will disappear because of AI, and we need to be very thoughtful with our training opportunities that we're rolling out. Many of the jobs that are going to be lost are jobs that are traditionally done by women and women of color."

A survey from Indeed looked at the percentage of skills that could be replaced by generative AI, and two of the top ones were customer service representative and administrative assistant.

"There are some jobs that will disappear because of AI, and we need to be very thoughtful with our training opportunities that we're rolling out."

-Sen. James Maroney, Connecticut

"Those are the jobs that there will be less of, and obviously, it's bad because people will be losing work, but what's even worse is those are typically gateway jobs, jobs that people come in, they get their foot in the door and they work their way up. And so we need to be very, very intentional and thoughtful in how we roll out our training opportunities," says Maroney, who also serves as vice chair of NCSL's Task Force on Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Privacy.

Citing a recent report by McKinsey & Co., he says if we don't roll out generative AI thoughtfully, it has the potential to increase the racial wealth gap by $43 billion annually. But if we roll it out thoughtfully with the training opportunities, there is the potential to narrow that gap.

It's the "how" that's the stickler.

Partnering with government, nonprofits, academics and industry is a key, he says. People need to have access to the digital tools that can help make them better job candidates. Connecticut is 98% wired, he says, but a survey of 7,000 families reported 27% of them lacked access to high-speed internet and 38% failed a digital literacy test.

"As we found during the pandemic, a lot of people, poorer families especially, connect to the internet through their phone," he says. "We developed a certificate in generative AI that we launched at Charter Oak State College. We partnered with Google using the AI Essentials course. We're making this a free program that when you finish, you'll have a certificate that you can put on LinkedIn or on your resume."

It's not just coding and digital savvy that will make an AI-ready workforce, says Tim Taylor, co-founder and president of America Succeeds, which engages business in modernizing education systems to drive equity and opportunity.

Taylor says workers need "durable skills," a term created by America Succeeds to encompass critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity, as well as character skills like fortitude, growth mindset and leadership.

"You'll take these skills with you from job to job for the rest of your life," he says.

He says America Succeeds ran skills through 88 million job descriptions on the internet, "and I don't think anybody in this room will be surprised to hear that eight of the top 10 most in-demand skills across every industry, across every geography and regardless of education attainment are durable skills."

He adds, "In fact, it was shocking to us that it wasn't a little bit higher, but it represents the fact that this is what employers across the board are looking for. They're foundational to the success of anybody who is going to move forward and be able to create opportunity for themselves in the future. The top five durable skills show up four times more often than the top five technical skills."

Despite moves in some states to remove formal degree requirements from job postings and shifting to skills-based hiring approaches, Taylor says a four-year college degree remains "the proxy for durable skills."

"It's not the perfect proxy, but it's still a decent proxy for durable skills," he says. "Hiring managers will continue to look for a four-year degree as it relates to those durable skills, even when an applicant might be able to demonstrate that they have some of the technical skills that are required for the job. Think about it. Everybody in the history of history has been hired for a combination of their technical and durable skills and trying to validate and assess those by HR managers is not easy, and that shift isn't going to come very quickly."

Candace Archer, policy director at the AFL-CIO, says the voice of workers is important in these discussions and debates.

"We believe that AI and technology can make jobs better and safer, but only understanding how workers are affected is going to get us to that place," she says.

And the best way to get to that place, she says, is to make sure that workers are part of AI's development and implementation.

"This is a relationship of employers and workers and trying to figure out a way through some really complicated things," she says. And if workers aren't in the discussions, "You are missing a vital part of the people who are going to be affected by AI."

Mark Wolf is a senior editor at NCSL.

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