AI giants and ex-Gina Raimondo launch RAISE US to retrain laid-off workers

On Thursday, a bipartisan coalition called RAISE US was unveiled with a blunt mission: help retrain and redeploy workers affected by AI-driven job transitions. It is founded by former US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who will serve as CEO of RAISE US, and former Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb. And it arrives in a moment when many AI vendors are still racing to replace human labor quickly, not slowly.

The coalition’s stated goal is to “design and pilot new corporate incentives to retrain and redeploy workers, new approaches to support people through job transitions, and new training models tied to changing employer demand.” That matters because it is an attempt to move the AI workforce conversation away from pure headcount cuts and toward structured transition mechanisms. The catch: the announcement emphasizes employer incentives and training models, but it “makes no mention of worker rights,” while it does tease “the possibility of wage insurance and career navigation so changing jobs no longer means financial ruin.”

RAISE US is not just a press release. It has recognizable anchor partners including Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft, and the OpenAI Foundation, described as vendors of the AI models inspiring recent layoffs. Beyond that, the coalition has broader backing, with financial sponsorship from Bank of America and support from “more than two dozen major companies and foundations.” For executives, that sponsorship web is the point. Coalition building in Washington is how budgets get shaped, how pilot programs get funded, and how companies turn a reputational problem into a durable operating framework.

Still, the coalition’s “possible wage insurance” line runs into a hard reality: the US already struggles to protect incomes during shocks. The source notes that the federal minimum wage has been frozen at $7.25 since 2009 and is “at its lowest real value in 77 years.” That means even before AI comes knocking, many workers are living close to the edge. Wage insurance sounds like a safety net, but the source also flags a major solvency concern: healthcare costs could erase the protection promised by wage insurance. In other words, the initiative may talk like a cushion, but the cushion could depend on policy details that are politically and financially fragile.

The political architecture is also telling. The coalition is explicitly bipartisan and includes former government officials, and Raimondo argues that America’s strategy is incomplete without a human plan. She said, “America has a technology strategy for leading the global AI competition. It does not yet have a people strategy - and we cannot lead without one. If we build the best AI systems in the world and leave millions of Americans behind, we won’t have won anything; we’ll have automated our own decline.” For executives, this is an attempt to force a reckoning: companies can keep scaling AI, but the narrative now needs an accompanying workforce strategy that can survive scrutiny.

Corporate support also comes with context that is hard to ignore. Amazon previously “sacrificed 14,000 jobs on the altar of AI transformation last fall,” yet it joined RAISE US, calling it a “natural extension” of investing in people, partnering with governments, and building programs that help workers and communities succeed. Microsoft, which “ousted about 9,000 employees last July” and recently “dangled buyouts” before a similar number of staff, also endorsed the effort. Microsoft VP and president Brad Smith provided an endorsement as part of that statement, and the coalition intends to focus on state workforce policy and programs, employer-driven worker transition plans, worker education and re-training programs, and policy recommendations.

RAISE US is stepping into a broader labor market story where the shape of hiring is changing, not just the total number of jobs. The source points to a SignalFire employment report noting that tech hiring is “at 25 percent less than what it was before the 2019 COVID pandemic” on a 12-month trailing basis. It also breaks down where hiring is contracting versus holding up. Engineering hiring is down 11 percent at major tech companies during this period and up 7 percent at startups. Designers face steeper drops: hiring down 48 percent at large tech companies and down 22 percent at startups. Marketing roles are down 36 percent at large organizations and down 18 percent at startups. Product manager hiring is down 39 percent at tech giants but up 2 percent at startups.

The source’s most operationally relevant detail is where demand is still concentrating. Software engineers, it says, are proportionally more in demand, accounting for 55 percent of tech hiring compared to 46 percent seven years ago. The AI job apocalypse is described as most visible among new hires with less than a year of experience, and among college graduates. SignalFire estimates that in 2016, about 22 percent of new hires at major tech companies had a year or less of experience; today, that figure is about 8 percent. Among startups, about 15 percent of new hires were inexperienced a decade ago, and today that number is just 3 percent.

There is a second-order risk here that boards should not treat as theoretical. SignalFire warns that “The critical systemic risk arises when an entire industry stops investing in early-career talent.” It adds that by eliminating the new grad pipeline to optimize current balance sheets, the tech industry could face a “severe leadership vacuum over the next decade.” RAISE US, as a coalition, is trying to turn that long-term leadership hazard into near-term training and redeployment programs, including policy recommendations and transition plans.

For executives and investors, the strategic stake is simple but uncomfortable: AI firms are already changing headcount dynamics, and the political system is now preparing a parallel set of mechanisms to manage the fallout. RAISE US could become a template for how major employers structure layoffs, retraining, and potentially wage-related protections. But the initiative’s omissions around worker rights, and the affordability concerns raised by wage insurance, mean the coalition’s success will depend on specifics that have not yet been settled. If your company is planning workforce transitions, hiring strategy, or retraining spend, this is a live signal of where regulators, employers, and public pressure are headed next.