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AI: Jobs, Power & Money
27JUL

States write the AI law Congress won't

4 min read
10:02UTC

New York's A9581 passed both chambers on the strength of a Senate vote and now awaits Governor Hochul's signature. California cleared SB 951 through its labour committee 5-0 on Wednesday 10 June. Washington's own federal bill has not moved.

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EconomicDeveloping
Key takeaway

New York and California are compelling AI hiring disclosure because the federal bill backing it has stalled in Congress.

New York's A9581, paired with its Senate twin S8706, passed both chambers of the state legislature and awaits Governor Kathy Hochul's signature 1. The bill would require firms with more than 50 employees to file an annual report on how AI affects their hiring. The Assembly had already passed A9581 alone on 3 June ; the Senate vote is the new step that puts the measure on the governor's desk.

The design answers a specific failure. New York's updated WARN Act, the layoff-notification law, became the world's first to require disclosure of AI's role in mass layoffs, and in its first year produced zero attributions from 162 companies covering 28,300 workers. A notice-only law gave firms no reason to attribute, so none did. An annual mandatory report shifts the default from voluntary disclosure to compelled filing, which is why the reporting trigger matters more than the headline.

California advanced three bills in the same week. SB 951, which would require 90-day notice of technological displacement, cleared its Senate labour committee 5-0 on Wednesday 10 June and heads to the Assembly, having already passed the full Senate 28-9 on 6 June . SB 947, the No Robo Bosses Act on automated decision systems, is working through Assembly amendments, and AB 2545, a worker-impact data assessment, reached Senate committee after passing the Assembly on 21 May 2. Colorado's signing of SB 26-189 had already shown state momentum was real .

The state channel is filling a federal vacuum. Senators Mark Warner and Mike Rounds have a disclosure bill, S.3339, endorsed by Microsoft and Google , but it has not moved in Congress. A patchwork of state thresholds raises multi-state compliance cost for large employers, yet if New York and California collect the data, those filings could become the de facto national evidence base that Washington has so far failed to assemble.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

When a company lays off workers in the US, it has to give 60 days' notice under a federal law called the WARN Act. That law requires companies to say how many jobs are going and where, but asks nothing about the cause. New York added a clause requiring disclosure of AI's role in mass layoffs, and in the first year not one of 162 companies covering 28,300 workers cited AI as the reason, even though many of those cuts happened in sectors where AI adoption is well documented. New York's new bill, A9581, tries a different design. Rather than requiring AI disclosure only at the moment of a mass layoff, it requires every company with 50 or more workers to file an annual report on how AI affects their hiring. California's SB 951, SB 947, and AB 2545 advance similar requirements through the state legislature. Forcing a regular annual check creates a paper trail that shows patterns, rather than relying on a moment of crisis when companies have every incentive to say nothing about AI.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

The federal vacuum has two structural sources. The Warner-Rounds S.3339 bill takes a commission-and-study approach, explicitly avoiding compelled disclosure in favour of a data-gathering exercise. It attracted Microsoft and Google endorsements precisely because it carries no compliance requirement.

The Hawley-Warner S.3108 Clarity Act, which did require AI-layoff reporting, stalled in committee before S.3339 replaced it as the live vehicle. Congress has not passed a compelled AI-employment disclosure law partly because the industry lobby spent $150 million on the 2026 midterms, with the Leading the Future PAC targeting pro-regulation candidates.

The WARN Act's forty-year design gap created the immediate trigger for A9581. The 1988 law required employers to file 60-day notice of mass layoffs but imposed no obligation to attribute the cause.

In 1988, factory closures were assumed self-evident; in 2026, a company can cut 28,300 workers and legally describe every departure as restructuring. New York's own WARN Act layer, added to require AI attribution, produced zero attributions in its first year because voluntary disclosure under a notice-only law generates no incentive to attribute.

What could happen next?
  • Consequence

    New York and California annual AI-hiring reports, if collected and published, would produce the first structured US state-level dataset on AI-attributed hiring changes, filling the gap the WARN Act left and the federal S.3339 bill avoids.

    Medium term · Suggested
  • Risk

    A patchwork of state disclosure thresholds, 50 employees in New York against the 25-percent-workforce trigger in California SB 951, raises multi-state compliance costs for large employers with operations across both states.

    Short term · Assessed
  • Precedent

    The state-channel strategy mirrors the pre-1988 WARN Act period when state advance-notice laws preceded the federal floor; as before, state data collection could force a federal response or invite federal pre-emption.

    Long term · Suggested
Sources:Bloomberg Law·Bloomberg Law·Transparency Coalition
Mentions:New York A 9581 →California →Senator Mark Warner →Mike Rounds →WARN Act →Maine →Department of Justice →Microsoft →Sacramento →SB 947 →Google →SB 26-189 →Wisconsin →AB 2545 →SB 951 →Kathy Hochul →
First Reported In

Update #13 · Washington pulls a live AI model

Bloomberg Law· 13 Jun 2026
Read original →
Causes and effects
Caused by
New York moves to count AI job losses
New York Assembly passed A9581 alone on 3 June; Senate passage is the new development that advances the bill to Hochul.
Occurred 3 Jun 2026
Read story →
California bill sets 90-day AI layoff notice
California SB 951 cleared the full Senate 28-9 on 6 June and now cleared its Senate Labour Committee 5-0 on 10 June advancing to Assembly.
Occurred 6 Jun 2026
Read story →
Colorado guts its AI hiring law
Colorado's SB 26-189 signing demonstrated that state-level AI employment legislation can pass, intensifying New York and California momentum.
Occurred 16 May 2026
Read story →
Microsoft and Google back the Warner-Rounds bill
The stalled Warner-Rounds S.3339 federal bill is the legislative vacuum being filled by New York A9581 and California SB 951.
Occurred 11 Mar 2026
Read story →
US states legislate as Washington stalls
Late-June committee action extends the California bill slate's progress reported alongside New York's A9581 passage.
Occurred 29 Jun 2026
Read story →
This Event
States write the AI law Congress won't
With the federal disclosure bill stalled, Albany and Sacramento are building the compelled-reporting scaffolding that would force employers to say how AI affects their hiring.
Led to
California eyes 45-day AI notice rule
AB 2545 was previously covered advancing through the Assembly; its 17 June Senate Labor 5-0 is a new legislative step, and AB 2656 is a new bill advancing alongside it.
Occurred 17 Jun 2026
Read story →
Different Perspectives
European Commission
European Commission
The European Commission's draft Annex III guidelines, closed for comment on 23 July, treat algorithmic scoring in recruitment, pay and termination as high-risk regardless of whether a human signs off, echoing Spain's Audiencia Nacional ruling 101/2026 on concealed scheduling algorithms. Brussels is shifting the fight from counting AI job losses to assigning legal liability for the tools themselves.
Office for National Statistics
Office for National Statistics
The Office for National Statistics recorded UK vacancies rising to 712,000 on 21 July, the first quarterly increase this beat has tracked, with payrolled employment down 85,000 on the year against May's 210,000 fall. The bulletin names no AI cause anywhere, and that is the point: nothing in the release confirms the displacement story it gets cited to support.
Christian Klein, SAP
Christian Klein, SAP
Christian Klein told investors on 23 July that SAP's research headcount will not grow for twelve months because AI agents and their token costs are absorbing the work, not because SAP is cutting jobs. He frames it as commercial arithmetic: the cost of AI-assisted coding tokens plus the salaries specialist AI hires command, not people being replaced by machines.
Betsey Stevenson, University of Michigan
Betsey Stevenson, University of Michigan
Betsey Stevenson argued that the 187,000 jobless-claims reading describes a market that hires little and fires little, not one AI is emptying. She said the real damage hides in eligibility rules and suppressed job postings, not in the headline layoff counts employers keep denying.
Comisiones Obreras, UGT and Concentrix's A Coruña works committee
Comisiones Obreras, UGT and Concentrix's A Coruña works committee
Comisiones Obreras, UGT and Concentrix's A Coruña works committee blamed Microsoft's push toward AI self-service for the 80 redundancies unions signed off on 22 July, not unavoidable business cause. A second Coruña procedure covering 80 more jobs runs to a 31 August deadline, and the unions want the state, not the employer, setting the pace of AI-driven cuts.
Stanford's 'We Must Act Now' signatories
Stanford's 'We Must Act Now' signatories
More than 200 academics, including 16 Nobel laureates, published a 13 July letter warning of AI-driven labour disruption, citing Daron Acemoglu's NBER estimate that AI's total factor productivity gain stays under 0.66% over ten years. The letter's own cited economics sit well below Goldman Sachs Research's 1.5-percentage-point estimate published the same week.