## The Overlooked Way AI Could Speed Hiring and Support Workers

While much of the AI conversation focuses on automation replacing jobs, there's a **transformative application** that's often overlooked: using artificial intelligence to **streamline government processes** and remove bureaucratic bottlenecks that hinder job creation.

### Maryland's Innovative AI Permitting System

Maryland has implemented an **AI-powered system** to modernize its permitting processes, demonstrating how technology can **accelerate job creation** rather than threaten it. By automating and optimizing permit approvals, the state is clearing **administrative roadblocks** that have traditionally slowed down hiring and business expansion.

### Beyond Automation: AI as an Enabler

This approach represents a **paradigm shift** in how we think about AI in the workforce. Instead of viewing artificial intelligence solely as a tool for **replacing human labor**, Maryland's system shows how it can be used to **enhance human productivity** and create more efficient pathways to employment.

### The Rockefeller Foundation's Perspective

Derek Kilmer, senior vice president of U.S. programs and policy at the Rockefeller Foundation and former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, highlights this innovative application. The foundation has been exploring how **strategic AI implementation** in government systems can have **far-reaching benefits** for workers and the economy.

### Practical Applications and Benefits

The AI system in Maryland focuses on:
- **Automating routine permit reviews**
- **Identifying bottlenecks** in approval processes
- **Providing real-time status updates** to applicants
- **Reducing processing times** from weeks to days

This not only helps businesses get started faster but also creates a **more responsive government** that can adapt to workforce needs.

### The Broader Implications for IT Professionals

For technology workers, this represents a **growing application area** for AI skills. Government modernization projects create opportunities for:
- **AI developers** specializing in process optimization
- **Data scientists** analyzing bureaucratic inefficiencies
- **Systems architects** designing government technology infrastructure
- **Project managers** overseeing public sector digital transformation

### Looking Forward

As more states and municipalities explore similar applications, we're likely to see a **new category of AI jobs** emerge focused on **public sector innovation**. This represents a significant opportunity for IT professionals interested in work that has **tangible social impact** while leveraging cutting-edge technology.

![Illustration of AI streamlining government processes](https://example.com/ai-government-illustration.jpg)

*Illustration by Yan Wu/The Washington Post; iStock*

Maryland is using AI to modernize permitting — and clearing bottlenecks to job creation.

How AI is Revolutionizing Government Hiring and Permitting: Maryland's Game-Changing Approach

## The $100 Million AI Jobs Initiative

The Rockefeller Foundation has announced an ambitious $100 million investment aimed at helping U.S. workers adapt to **tech-driven changes** in the labor market, with a particular focus on **AI disruption**. This exclusive initiative represents one of the largest private-sector responses to the growing challenges posed by artificial intelligence in the workplace.

## Why This Matters Now

**AI is already reshaping jobs** that local economies depend on, creating both opportunities and significant challenges for American workers. The speed at which artificial intelligence is transforming industries has created an urgent need for workforce adaptation strategies. Whether private-sector efforts like this can scale fast enough may help determine if the technology **widens or narrows American economic divides**.

## The "Big Bet on Good Jobs for America" Strategy

The three-year, $100 million commitment is part of the foundation's broader aim to create **1.6 million additional "good jobs"** nationally across 250 locations. The initiative will specifically target communities where people are at risk of falling out of work due to AI or where there's already been significant job loss.

Derek Kilmer, a former Democratic congressman from Washington who now serves as senior vice president at the Rockefeller Foundation, explained that "good jobs" include roles in sectors like **health care and food and nutrition** - areas that remain essential even as technology transforms other industries.

## How the Program Will Work

The Rockefeller Foundation will partner with **local groups and policymakers** to test new policies and programs, including:

- **Job training pathways** specifically designed for AI-impacted industries
- Expanded childcare access to remove barriers to workforce participation
- Easing credential requirements that may prevent qualified workers from accessing opportunities
- Covering upfront training costs for high-demand positions like health care jobs

Rather than pre-selecting all 250 locations, the foundation plans to start with a smaller group of about **20-30 communities** and then scale what works based on proven results. Locations will be targeted based on underlying conditions, including **labor market gaps and employer demand**.

## The AI Acceleration Challenge

"AI is accelerating economic disruption and sidelining working-age Americans from the labor market," Kilmer told Axios. "When we are at these moments of profound economic change, societies have a choice: either to help people in places adapt or absorb the consequences for decades."

Kilmer emphasized that some of the foundation's work focuses on how **AI can actually help** rather than just disrupt - for example, by speeding up permit processing for affordable housing buildouts, which creates construction jobs while addressing housing shortages.

## The Bigger Picture: Private vs. Public Response

It's increasingly looking like **private philanthropy and local efforts** will be quicker than the federal government to jump in with funding projects to help Americans with job loss and displacement. This $100 million initiative represents a significant bet that targeted, community-based approaches can effectively address the challenges of AI-driven labor market changes.

However, whether such efforts can **keep pace with the speed and scale** of labor market disruption remains an open question. The foundation's approach of starting small and scaling what works represents a pragmatic strategy, but the ultimate success will depend on whether these programs can be implemented quickly enough to make a meaningful difference for workers facing immediate AI-related challenges.

The Rockefeller Foundation is putting $100 million toward helping U.S. workers adapt to tech-driven changes to the labor market.

Rockefeller Foundation Bets $100M on AI Job Revolution: Can This Save American Workers?

## The AI-Driven Workforce Transformation in Tennessee

Technology companies laid off more than **80,000 employees globally** over the last four months, according to finance research company Trading Platforms. This pullback has reached Tennessee, even as the state positions itself as a growing tech hub.

Nashville-based Oracle Corp. engineers were among the company's **25,000 layoffs in March** amid restructuring to invest in artificial intelligence infrastructure. Meanwhile, about 16,000 Amazon workers were laid off in early January after surviving a 14,000-employee cuts that happened months earlier. Those include an unknown number of Nashville workers.

![Amazon Nashville Office](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/authoring/authoring-images/2026/04/16/PNAS/89647169007-101-platform-way-041626-an-002.jpg)
*The 101 Platform Way N. building in Nashville, Tenn., Thursday, April 16, 2026. The building is home to Amazon's Nashville offices.*

"The way I see it, in the next five years, there will be less and less entry level jobs. There are some of these jobs that will go away, and they will not be back," Middle Tennessee State University information-technology professor Sam Zaza said. "But at the same time, new jobs will come in."

Zaza pointed to **artificial intelligence as a key driver** behind the restructuring and subsequent layoffs. Just as the rise of the internet fueled the dot‑com bubble in the late 1990s and web analytics reshaped tech jobs by 2010, she and other experts expect AI to drive the next major shift.

"What we're seeing, it's not new," Zaza said. "It's history repeating itself."

Tennessee started increasing its tech investments in the early 2010s and quickly became one of the fastest-growing markets for tech jobs in 2015. Deputy Governor and Tennessee Economic Development Commissioner Stuart McWhorter said the COVID-19 pandemic briefly threw off that momentum, but tech remains a heavy focus for state leaders, especially as AI growth continues.

"Tennessee’s technology sector is an increasingly important part of our economic strategy, but we view it primarily through a workforce lens," McWhorter said. "We believe a real opportunity lies in strengthening and diversifying our tech talent pipeline, meaning cultivating the right environment to educate, train and retain highly skilled workers across the state."

## The Cycle of Hiring and Layoffs

Waymo implemented AI technology to take the place of rideshare drivers. Netflix uses automated models to customize customer profiles for movie suggestions and personalized artwork. Amazon deploys AI to optimize delivery routes, forecast demand for products and reduce the need for in-store employees at some Whole Foods locations with its just-walk-out model.

"The industry is still figuring out how to maximize the benefits it gets from AI usage," Zaza said.

The gap between the promise of new technologies and real-world implementation can create a **cycle of over-hiring followed by mass layoffs**, as seen recently at Amazon, Oracle and Meta, among others, she said.

Goldman Sachs researcher Joseph Briggs said this cycle will continue over the next decade, and up to **7% of the workforce will be displaced** during that time. If the displacement is spread across 10 years, he said he expects about 0.6% increase in the unemployment rate.

“You can see AI’s impact in the tech sector, where the employment share as a proportion of the whole economy has gone below the long-term trend,” Briggs said, in a March report. “But if it’s more frontloaded, the impacts on the economy are much larger."

After analyzing four decades of federal data encompassing numerous technology-driven layoffs, Goldman Sachs researchers Pierfrancesco Mei and Jessica Rindels wrote in a recent note that workers who lose jobs because of automation take longer to find new jobs and are more vulnerable to pay cuts.

“AI-driven displacement could impose lasting costs on affected workers, worsening labor market outcomes for several years,” an April 6 report said.

## Tennessee's Layoff Landscape

![Vanderbilt Medical Center](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/authoring/authoring-images/2025/09/24/PNAS/86336911007-vanderbilt-medical-tower-035.JPG)
*Vanderbilt University Medical Center laid off over 600 employees in Nashville, Tenn., in 2025.*

In 2025, Tennessee layoffs hit a **five-year high** with 8,856 employees impacted by mass employee reductions, according to The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Those included companies like FedEx, Bridgestone, Kroger and Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

In 2026, about 2,821 employees were laid off, according to mass layoff reports from the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development. That total does not include cutbacks at Oracle, Amazon and other companies headquartered outside the state. Neither Oracle nor Amazon has specified how many employees were laid off in Tennessee.

Other major companies that cut down their Tennessee workforces this year include Nike, which slashed 583 jobs from distribution centers, auto parts maker First Brands, which nixed 333 jobs, and Blue Oval SK's staff reduction of 150 at a Stanton battery plant.

## The Future of Tennessee's Tech Industry

![Tennessee Tech Conference](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/authoring/authoring-images/2024/09/10/PNAS/75165509007-ggg-6554.jpg)
*From left, Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon, Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell, and Launch Tennessee CEO Lindsey Cox alongside Memphis Mayor Paul Young all listen as Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly speaks during Tennessee's 3686 conference at Cannery Hall in Nashville, Tenn., Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024.*

As large tech companies cut back on entry‑level roles in favor of workers with AI skills, smaller Tennessee startups say the shift is creating new opportunities.

"For growing tech companies in Middle Tennessee, that tech talent pipeline that was freshly graduating and heading straight into corporate is maybe no longer heading into corporate at that same rate," LaunchTN Director Lindsey Cox said. "It's a really interesting opportunity to capture some folks that weren't going to be on the table before as potential hires."

LaunchTN is a nonprofit dedicated to supporting Tennessee's startup ecosystem, and Cox said she's encouraging their portfolio companies to take advantage of the situation. Still, Cox said the need for senior engineering talent who understand how to implement AI remains prominent.

"My broader concern as an individual would be how are we then training up junior folks to get that knowledge," Cox said. "We're looking to our universities for how they are educating that tech talent to be able to utilize AI. Companies are going to be looking for that immediately."

![Amazon Nashville Office Exterior](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/authoring/authoring-images/2026/04/16/PNAS/89647166007-101-platform-way-041626-an-004.jpg)
*The 101 Platform Way N. building, left, in Nashville, Tenn., Thursday, April 16, 2026. The building is home to Amazon's Nashville offices.*

The wider adoption of artificial intelligence is creating a gap in Tennessee's workforce, experts say. Here's what that means for incoming layoffs.

AI's Double-Edged Sword: How Artificial Intelligence is Reshaping Tennessee's Tech Job Market

## The Golden Era is Over

On February 10, 2025, at 7:32 a.m., the dreaded email hit my inbox. After nearly six years at **Meta** as a content strategist, I got the axe. The company announced the layoffs were due to "low performance"—a gut punch after years of glowing reviews and praise from colleagues.

![A woman putting a resume through a shredder.](https://compote.slate.com/images/59e25e8b-fe91-4611-ad41-19d8664b8663.jpeg?crop=1560%2C1040%2Cx0%2Cy0)

*Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Getty Images Plus.*

## The Bloodbath Continues

The 2010s and early 2020s were the **golden era of tech**—aggressive hiring, generous salaries, and flowing perks defined the industry. The years since have been a never-ending bloodbath. **More than 1.2 million people have been laid off in tech since 2022**, according to TrueUp.Io. Because these are only the publicly reported layoffs, the number could be higher.

## From Heavily Recruited to Unemployable

Recruiters used to message me weekly, sometimes daily, a few years ago. The options were copious, the outlook optimistic. After enduring so much job insecurity early in my career, I thought I had made it. In the past year, though, I've applied to at least **100 roles** for which I was an excellent fit. I've secured referrals, used A.I. to customize my résumé and cover letter, openly shared on social media, and simply *persisted*.

But my job prospects have been bleak. I've interviewed for three full-time roles and one fixed-term contract role in more than a year. I've never felt so *unemployable*.

## A Widespread Crisis

My story isn't unique. Tech workers across the industry are struggling to regain employment in their fields despite relentless searching, experiencing **burnout on top of unemployment**. People like me, once heavily recruited and flush with career choices, now can't catch a break.

"I applied to hundreds of roles over several months. But the process was extremely slow and led nowhere," technical recruiter A. Kapadia told me. Kapadia was laid off in March 2024 and has held two short-lived roles since, supporting herself through paid content creation and side jobs like dog-sitting.

## The AI Factor

What's particularly frustrating is that many CEOs admit they over-hired during COVID and are now cutting costs to improve "efficiency" and to ramp up **A.I. infrastructure**. Not only is A.I. a costly investment that companies *hope* will pay off by automating more jobs, but the layoffs are also occurring at a breathless rate. While I was writing this piece, Oracle slashed another 30,000 jobs on March 31.

Joseph Politano, founder of the Apricitas Economics newsletter, explained: "Tech in particular has gone from adding 200,000 to 300,000 jobs per year to losing 10,000 to 50,000 jobs per year in one of the worst swings of any sector. This is genuinely the worst tech job market in decades."

## The Recruitment Bottleneck

A.I. is largely to blame for the hiring chaos, according to Tiberiu Trandaburu, CEO and founder of tech staffing agency Uptalen. "By adding the use of it, recruiting teams are increasing their productivity, but it's leading to more noise due to the greater number of people in the process and causing over-filtering and missing out on good candidates who don't meet rigid criteria," Trandaburu said.

## A Temporary Reprieve

I eventually landed a fixed-term contract role at another big tech company. I'm paid **25 percent less** than I was for my job at Meta, with five annual PTO days and zero paid holidays, and I'm overqualified for the work I do. Nonetheless, I'm grateful to be employed—and in the field I've invested so much of my career in. But I'm also exhausted. I feel like I'm trapped in a maze that keeps changing its configuration.

## The Human Cost

What tech leaders fail to grasp is that as they reprioritize toward a technology that's positioned to displace more workers, they're sending a message: **Profits trump all and workers are fat to trim**. The golden era of tech is dead.

Forty-nine percent of the American workforce says they're struggling, according to Gallup, the first time it's outnumbered the percentage of folks who say they're thriving. And discontent can be contagious, ultimately having a ripple effect on worsening morale and productivity.

The U.S. job market is projected to add 5.2 million jobs through 2034. The health care and social assistance industries are expected to experience the largest job growth and be the fastest-growing industries. Tech is playing a risky game of chicken with talent—because they *will* find greener grass elsewhere.

More than a million laid-off workers like me are scrambling in a job market that no longer wants us.

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