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Bureau of Labor Statistics Report to the 

Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate

on Measuring the Effects of New Technologies on the American Workforce 

Introduction 

The following report outlines the steps the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. 

Department of Labor (DOL) will undertake in Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 to develop a strategy for 

measuring the impact of new technologies, including automation, digitization, and artificial 

intelligence (AI), on the American workforce. This report is in response to the following 

language included in the Senate Committee on Appropriations Report (S. Rept. 115-289) that 

accompanied the Department of Defense and Labor Health and Human Services and Education 

Appropriations Act, 2019 and Continuing Appropriations Act, 2019 (Pub. L. 115-245): 

The Committee is concerned that there continues to be insufficient data on the impact 

technology is having on the American workforce. The Committee encourages BLS to 

develop a strategy to better understand how automation, digitization, and artificial 

intelligence are changing the employment landscape. BLS is directed to submit a report to 

the Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate no later 

than 90 days after enactment of this act detailing the steps taken to develop the data strategy 

as directed. (S. Rept. 115-289, p. 38) 

Background 

BLS is the principal federal statistical agency responsible for measuring labor market activity, 

working conditions, and price changes in the economy. Its mission is to collect, analyze, and 

disseminate essential economic information to support public and private decision-making that 

forms the basis of our democratic, free-enterprise system. Like all federal statistical agencies, 

BLS executes its statistical mission with independence, serving its users by providing products 

and services that are accurate, objective, relevant, timely, and accessible. 

BLS is continually seeking to better meet stakeholder needs by developing new, relevant and 

comprehensive measures on the nature of employment. One area of research that has been 

identified to meet this objective is developing outputs that can be used to assess the impact of 

new technologies (including automation, digitization and artificial intelligence (AI)) on the 

workforce. 

The scope of new technologies is far broader than AI research. For example, there are multiple 

ongoing initiatives to evaluate the impacts of autonomous vehicles (AV) on labor markets in 

transportation. In July 2018, Department of Transportation (DOT) published a Comprehensive 

Management Plan for Automated Vehicles Initiatives that provides a description of its recent and 

upcoming activities related to automation (https://www.transportation.gov/AV). Such 

automation-related initiatives articulate a need for careful, data-driven analysis of how 

technology is likely to affect the workforce. BLS and other DOL agencies are coordinating with 

DOT on this research. 
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BLS currently collects occupation-specific data on pay, benefits, employment, and job 

requirements from employers. BLS generates statistics on labor force characteristics from 

households via the Current Population Survey (and its supplements, including the Displaced 

Worker Supplement), and measures of a variety of capital inputs, including several categories of 

IT and communications capital using Census data. In addition, BLS produces the Occupational 

Outlook Handbook, which contains qualitative information on jobs, and Employment 

Projections, which models future employment. These products provide some, but not all, of the 

information required to assess the impact of automation on the workforce. 

FY 2019 Work Plan 

BLS plans to work with a contractor in FY 2019, concluding in the first quarter of FY 2020, to 

produce the following reports: 

a. A literature review that summarizes and synthesizes economic theory on the interaction 

between labor and capital in the workplace and how this is affected by new technologies 

such as automation, digitization, and AI. This review will be the basis for developing a 

comprehensive list of constructs that need to be measured to allow researchers to assess 

the impact of these new technologies on the workforce. 

b. An analysis that identifies how the key constructs are currently captured by federal 

statistical agencies in the U.S. and internationally and proposes ways to supplement the 

data that BLS currently collects with additional information on automation, digitization, 

and AI to reach the desired set of constructs. 

c. A final report that recommends data collection options to fill those gaps (as well as 

methodologies for leveraging existing BLS data to the fullest extent). These data 

collection options must include a qualitative analysis of the trade-off between collection 

cost and variable quality, be properly documented, and reflect modern survey 

methodology. The data collection must span all jobs in the private sector. Alternative 

data sources should also be evaluated, both in terms of coverage of the key concept, 

quality and availability to BLS.

In the first quarter of FY 2020, BLS will identify pilot projects to test feasibility of collecting a 

subset of the data elements recommended in the final report. BLS expects these projects to begin 

in FY 2020, resources permitting.