What is the future of work?

Work and workplaces are changing rapidly. Learn what's next from MIT Sloan experts.
Find out how MIT Sloan is leading the future of work
Centers + Intiatives
MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research
IWER is a multidisciplinary and highly collaborative hub for the study of work and employment
Centers + Intiatives
The Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work
The Stone Center applies economics research to identify innovative ways to move the labor market onto a more equitable trajectory.
Executive Education
Leading the Future of Work
This course prepare you, and your organization, for an evolving workplace as it investigates its impact on social, legal, and economic policy.
MIT hasn’t just prepared me for the future of work—it’s pushed me to study it. As AI systems become more capable, more of our online activity will be carried out by artificial agents. That raises big questions.
Benjamin Manning

PhD Student
I think, at its most generous, AI tools enable us to learn from our collective actions ... What AI tools do is they take all of those solutions, those attempts—whether good or bad—and use them as training data to build models.
Danielle Li

David Sarnoff Professor of Management of Technology; Professor, Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management
To me, the future of work means democracy. It’s hard to have any positive vision of work without meaningfully engaging workers. This is why I research economic democracy—worker voice is pivotal in designing good jobs.
Alex Busch

PhD Student
The rise of generative AI is a real opportunity, but making the most of it will demand a new approach to decision-making, as well as a new focus on worker training, fair transitions, and effective policy.
Thomas Kochan

George Maverick Bunker Professor of Management, Emeritus; Professor of Human Resources and Management, Emeritus
Combinations of humans and AI work best when each party can do the thing they do better than the other.
Thomas W. Malone

Patrick J. McGovern (1959) Professor of Management; Director, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence; Professor, Information Technology
 
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Centers + Intiatives
MIT Work of the Future at the IPC
Growing out of MIT's Work of the Future Task Force (2018-2020), the Work of the Future Initiative at the Industrial Performance Center conducts multidisciplinary research on the ways technology is changing work.
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Workforce development in the age of AI
MIT experts share strategies to transform skills, roles, and human potential across your organization.
Centers + Intiatives
MIT Initiative for New Manufacturing
INM is an MIT-wide effort that drives research, education, and collaborations to transform the future of manufacturing in the United States and beyond.

The Future of Work

How artificial intelligence impacts the US labor market
New research from MIT Sloan shows that companies can see substantial gains by putting AI to work — with that growth translating into jobs.
Who benefits from AI? New comic explores technology’s impact on labor
A free comic book adapts MIT Nobel Prize-winning economists’ work on how AI and technological change affect workers and shared prosperity.
For manufacturers, listening to workers pays off in productivity
Companies that act on input from front-line employees pay their workers more and experience a productivity bump that offsets those costs.
Building a quantum workforce
The Quantum Index Report from MIT documents a growing demand for quantum skills and emerging efforts to train a quantum workforce.
Workers need good jobs. The climate sector can help
The U.S. is experiencing a crisis around job quality. Emerging climate jobs can give workers a living wage, health care, and safe working conditions.
Media: CIO
Humanizing AI: Empowering people, not replacing them
AI works best not when it replaces humans, but when it augments them. As professor Thomas W. Malone, director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, puts it: "Combinations of humans and AI work best when each party can do the thing they do better than the other."

Faculty Publications

Accelerating Innovation: Competitive Advantage Through Ecosystem Engagement
Senior lecturer Phil Budden and associate dean for innovation Fiona Murray provide a practical guide to engaging with the five key stakeholders in an innovation ecosystem.
The Meritocracy Paradox: Where Talent Management Strategies Go Wrong and How to…
MIT Sloan professor Emilio J. Castilla offers practical solutions to help organizations build fairer, more effective people management practices.
Power and Progress: Our 1000-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity
In their book, “Power and Progress,” Nobel laureates Daron Acemoglu, Institute professor, and Simon Johnson, MIT Sloan professor, ask whether the benefits of AI will be shared widely or feed inequality.
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