The order directs agencies to explore severance standards, expanded unemployment insurance, worker ownership models, and job retraining programs
San Francisco Chronicle / Hearst Newspapers / Getty Images
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on Thursday directing state agencies to prepare workers, small businesses, and communities for potential economic disruption from artificial intelligence — the first such order issued by a U.S. governor.
Among its provisions, the order pulls together state agencies, labor experts, economists, universities, and industry leaders to develop new policies, gather data, and flag early signs of workforce disruption. Policy options under examination include severance standards, expanded unemployment insurance, retraining programs specifically targeting white-collar workers, worker ownership models, and what Newsom termed "universal basic capital" — a framework that would give every resident a share in assets like corporate stocks, bonds, or wealth funds.
"California has never sat back and watched as the future happened to us — and we won't start now," Newsom said in a statement. "This moment demands that we reimagine the entire system — how we work, how we govern, how we prepare people for the future."
The order also calls for a new dashboard tracking AI's impact across sectors, recommendations within 180 days on updating California's Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, and a single online platform to help Californians navigate government services and identify social benefits for which they may be eligible.
The order's timing followed a major announcement from Meta $META, which said it would cut around 8,000 jobs — roughly one in ten of its employees — as part of an accelerated push into AI, according to KQED. Several other major tech companies, including Intel $INTC, Cisco $CSCO, and Amazon $AMZN, have also slimmed their workforces in recent months, pointing to a strategic reallocation of resources toward AI talent and data infrastructure, according to KQED.
Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO, pushed back on the framing of the order. "Catastrophic job loss from AI is not inevitable, it's a political choice," she wrote in a statement, according to KQED. Still, Gonzalez found partial common ground with the order, praising its recognition of collective bargaining as a mechanism for worker protection — while pointing out that Newsom had blocked legislation in previous years that would have enacted similar safeguards.
The order arrives as companies have been reallocating budgets away from payroll and toward AI infrastructure, a dynamic that has accelerated white-collar displacement even where specific roles have not been directly automated. White-collar payrolls have contracted for 31 consecutive months, a stretch without precedent outside a recession, according to prior Quartz reporting.
Also announced alongside the executive order was a broader rollout of Engaged California — a digital platform first deployed during the 2025 Los Angeles wildfire recovery — which the administration will now use to solicit public perspectives on how AI is reshaping work across the state, according to KQED.
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