Illinois Governor JB Pritzker discussed Wednesday the long-term impact of artificial intelligence on the labor market, stating that while current layoffs directly attributed to AI remain low, major workforce disruptions across white-collar industries are inevitable.
Speaking on the technology’s trajectory, Pritzker emphasized that stopping AI adoption is not an option for state or federal leadership. “AI is not going to go away, it just isn’t,” Pritzker said. “It’s either going to be owned by Chinese owners, or it’s going to be owned by U.S. owners. It’s either going to be controlled by the United States or controlled by another country… but the point is that we can’t make it go away and we can’t become Luddites.”
Addressing current corporate announcements regarding workforce reductions, Pritzker noted that some businesses are using AI as a pretext for standard cost-cutting measures. “Sometimes they’re laying people off and saying it’s AI when actually companies just need to lay people off and they want to blame it on something,” he said.
However, Pritzker pointed to professional sectors like law and accounting as areas that will see reduced hiring for entry-level positions.
Recounting a discussion with a law firm executive, Pritzker said, “A law firm leader basically said to me, ‘Look, we’re not going to need anywhere near as many associates to hire each year… because we don’t need somebody to go—when I graduated from law school, when you were an associate, you basically spent your life in a library looking up case law and writing memos. That’s not going to be needed.'”
According to Pritzker, the executive suggested that “it may come to a day when the only reason you hire associates is because you’re going to need at least some human beings to run the law firm eventually.” Pritzker added, “We’re going to see a lot of jobs go away.”
While white-collar desk roles face automation, physical trades—including HVAC technicians, plumbers, and construction workers—will remain less susceptible to near-term AI disruption, Pritzker noted. He argued that public policy must adjust to steer students and job seekers toward skilled labor shortages and specialized AI roles.
Pritzker also expressed skepticism regarding universal basic income (UBI) as a solution for workers displaced by automation. “I don’t think universal basic income is going to work,” he said. “The problem of paying people not to work who want to work when there are no jobs available feels like that’s not going to be a society that we want to live in”.
Instead, Pritzker highlighted workforce development programs in Illinois designed to align labor skills with emerging industries, including quantum computing and specialized technology. He pointed to large-scale state technology initiatives, projecting that local quantum computing hubs will generate “thousands and thousands of jobs” and attract substantial private investment over the next two decades.
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