Paul Osterman

Paul Osterman is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and one of the United States' leading labour economists, with an academic career spanning more than four decades of research into internal labour markets, job quality and workforce policy.

He is the author of several influential books, including Securing Prosperity and Good Jobs America, and has served on National Academy of Sciences committees examining the future of work, as well as advising the US Department of Labor and congressional committees on workforce policy. His work on how firms structure careers, wage ladders and job security internally has become foundational to understanding why external shocks, technology, offshoring, automation, translate into workforce disruption differently across industries and firm types.

That grounding is what gives his more recent scepticism about AI-attributed layoffs its weight: rather than a one-off comment, it extends a career-long argument that employers reach for whichever technological narrative is most convenient when explaining decisions made for other reasons.