Newsom signs order aimed at tackling AI job displacement

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed an executive order Thursday aimed at addressing potential job losses from AI, as workers face an uncertain future with a technology that industry leaders themselves warn could have significant impacts on the labor market.

The order directs state agencies to evaluate policies that provide support to displaced workers — such as compensation offerings, temporary subsidized employment programs and workforce training programs — and put forward recommendations.

“California has never sat back and watched as the future happened to us — and we won’t start now,” Newsom said in a statement on Thursday. “We have taken the lead on advancing innovation, safety and transparency. But we must think bigger.”

“This moment demands that we reimagine the entire system — how we work, how we govern, how we prepare people for the future — and that work is starting right here in the Golden State,” he continued.

AI is widely expected to disrupt the labor market, but its impact is still unclear.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has suggested the technology could wipe out as much as half of all entry-level, white-collar jobs in the coming years. But others, like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, have offered more sanguine takes.

“i think a lot of people are going to be busier (and hopefully more fulfilled) than ever, and jobs doomerism is likely long-term wrong,” Altman wrote in a post on the social platform X earlier this month. “though of course there will be disruption/significant transition as we switch to new jobs, the jobs of the future may look v different, etc.”

Even as numerous companies point to AI as a factor in recent decisions to conduct layoffs, there is still limited economic data showing the technology is having large-scale effects.

Newsom’s latest executive order comes as the Golden State has taken on a prominent role in state-level efforts to regulate AI. He signed a bill last year requiring AI companies to disclose safety information about large-scale, leading-edge models that he touted as “first-in-the-nation frontier AI safety legislation.”

However, these efforts have occasionally run up against a push by the Trump administration to regulate AI at the federal level with a lighter touch.