CNBC Changemakers

Gina Raimondo on Why the AI Jobs Shock Needs a Plan

Gina Raimondo· Former U.S. Commerce Secretary; now leads Raise Us at Raise Us
·~37 min·English·CNBC
PolicyBusiness Strategy
TL;DR

Former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo argues the real danger of AI is not the technology but the lack of a planned jobs transition, and she is building a state-by-state coalition of governors and CEOs to retrain workers before the layoffs arrive.

01The Stakes

The Danger Is the Missing Plan, Not the Robots

Raimondo's worst case isn't AI itself - it's <strong>deploying it with no managed transition</strong>, which she says could mean a deep recession, unrest, and a regulatory backlash that cedes the lead to China.

I think you could have a economic recession that is deep and long. I think you could have rioting in the streets. I I mean that sincerely.

— Gina Raimondo, CNBC Changemakers
Key Insight
She frames AI as neutral - the harm comes from speed without a plan. That reframing is deliberate: it lets her recruit the same CEOs building the technology, because the enemy is disorder, not their product.
02Core Idea

A Planned Transition, Not a Free-for-All

She believes AI, like past technology, will eventually create more jobs than it destroys - but only a <strong>planned transition</strong> keeps the bottom from falling out of the labor market first.

What I'm looking for is a planned transition to an AI economy.

— Gina Raimondo, CNBC Changemakers
Key Insight
The optimism and the alarm are not in tension - they are the setup and the catch. The long-run gain is only reachable if the short-run shock is managed, which is why 'transition' does all the work in her argument.
03The Strategy

Congress Won't Act, So the States Will

Betting <strong>Congress won't pass worker legislation for years</strong>, she skips Washington and builds a coalition of bipartisan governors and two dozen CEOs launching state pilots.

I'm building a coalition of the willing. We have, I think, 24 companies, 25 companies in our coalition.

— Gina Raimondo, CNBC Changemakers
Key Insight
This is a bet on federalism as a workaround for gridlock: prove the policy in a few states, then hand Congress a finished template to copy. The risk is that voluntary CEO goodwill is thin where it collides with share price.
04The Incentive Bug

You Pay a Tax for Employees, Nothing for Agents

Raimondo points to a built-in distortion: a company owes <strong>payroll tax on every employee but nothing on an AI agent</strong>, creating an incentive to replace people.

right now, if you're an employer, you pay a payroll tax for every employee. You pay nothing for an agent. So, your incentive is to get rid of your employees, not pay that payroll tax, and use agents.

— Gina Raimondo, CNBC Changemakers
Key Insight
She names a structural distortion, not a villain: the incentive to cut jobs is baked into rules written before agents existed. It is also why she treats a payroll-tax rewrite and a possible 'token tax' as the federal piece only Congress can do.
05The Mechanism

Retrain Before the Layoff, Not After

Her core pilot flips the usual order: pay at-risk workers <strong>full-time for a year while retraining them half-time</strong>, so they move to the next job without ever passing through unemployment.

let them work a year full-time for full pay, but let them come to us and get retrained in that year so they never have a period of unemployment.

— Gina Raimondo, CNBC Changemakers
Key Insight
The idea is to move support upstream: an anticipated loss becomes the reason to fund training before the layoff instead of after the unemployment check. She calls these pilots and makes up the numbers, so whether that bridge actually holds is still the open question.
06The Gender Gap

Women Get Hit Twice

Raimondo is deeply concerned AI will hit women <strong>from two directions at once</strong>: they fill the clerical and call-center jobs AI targets first, and they tend to adopt AI slower than men.

women are clustered in jobs that are clerical of nature or um administrative and that's what's going to get hit hardest.

— Gina Raimondo, CNBC Changemakers
Key Insight
The two gaps compound: if the women most exposed are also the slowest to adopt AI, voluntary upskilling may miss exactly the people most at risk. That is the logic behind reaching them through their current employer, before displacement, rather than a training program they have to seek out.
07The Root Cause

A Workforce System From the Great Depression

Unemployment insurance dates to the Great Depression and college subsidies mostly miss, she argues - so she wants to use the AI shock as the <strong>forcing function to finally modernize</strong> a century-old safety net.

College mostly doesn't work for most American students, but yet we keep shoveling money into that.

— Gina Raimondo, CNBC Changemakers
Key Insight
She reframes AI as leverage, not just threat: the disruption is the rare political opening to rewrite unemployment insurance, training, and subsidies that have resisted change for decades. The crisis is the only thing big enough to move them.
08The Advice

Channel the Fear Into a Plan

Her advice to workers is to expect a career of change and <strong>turn fear into action rather than anger</strong> - learn the tools, make your voice heard, and even consider starting a business.

You might have 10 different jobs in your career. My dad had one for 30 years, you know.

— Gina Raimondo, CNBC Changemakers
Key Insight
Her advice shifts the target from any single skill to a disposition: expect many jobs, stay curious about the tools, and build something. The constant she bets on isn't a safe career but adaptability and judgment - the traits she argues AI can't yet replace.