The Resolution Foundation has launched a new project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, to measure and evaluate the impact of AI on the UK labour market in real time.

While debate rages about the impact of AI on the future of work, much of that debate focuses on prediction rather than evidence of what’s already happening in the labour market.

In order to fill this important gap in the debate, the Foundation is building new measurement tools to track AI’s actual, real-time impact as it unfolds.

The cutting-edge project will be the first to combine multiple real-time data sources into an integrated measurement framework. This will include:

• “Conversations at Scale” involving deploying AI-led qualitative interviewing to capture how thousands of workers and employers are experiencing AI-driven change, alongside Xavier Jaravel, Professor of Economics at the LSE, beginning this autumn
• Applying large language model-based classification to large-scale job advertisement data to track shifting employer skill demands
• Analysing career trajectory and skills data to examine how workers are adapting to AI exposed roles

A publicly accessible online dashboard bringing together these indicators will be a central output of the project, available from mid-2027. These vital, timely insights will inform business, researchers and policy makers, help to establish new standards for monitoring technological disruption in future.

The project Measuring AI’s Impact on the UK Labour Market: New Tools and Evidence is being run in collaboration with The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), the Institute of Directors, the British Chambers of Commerce, and Burning Glass Institute.