DOL to tap Big Tech and others for AI workplace data

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The Department of Labor (DOL) is reportedly tapping major tech players to help understand the data on AI’s impact on the workforce, according to acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling.

OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Amazon are some of the companies tapped to share data with the DOL in order to help it understand how businesses use AI and where the technology might be headed, Sonderling told Axios.

The new data from the tech giants would supplement the collection of ongoing government statistics, according to Sonderling, providing more insights into how companies are adopting AI and its implications for employees and the workforce. He told Axios the findings would be made public.

“The bottom line is—and I’ve been open about this—the government does not have the data,” Sonderling told Axios reporter Courtenay Brown during an event hosted by the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches that the agency has memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with a number of tech giants. “Who has the data? The large tech companies and the large Fortune 500 companies who are really going to be the most impacted by this.”

Economists and labor experts have warned that as AI is incorporated more and more into work and the labor market, its impact on working adults is largely unknown.

“We urge the Department of Labor to make collecting and providing high-quality and timely data for monitoring AI’s impact on labor markets a top priority,” experts including Stanford’s Erik Brynjolfsson, who runs the university’s digital economy lab, wrote ex-Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer last fall in an open letter calling on the government to act.

The news comes amid a troubled tenure for President Trump at the agency charged with protecting the interests of American workers.

Sonderling, who has not yet been confirmed to replace ousted and scandal-plagued Chavez-DeRemer following a spat of issues surrounding her leadership, top aides, and husband, is looking to realign the beleaguered agency to core business-friendly priorities and Trump’s economic priorities. But even the data used to guide those policies has come into question since the president took office again last January.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)—the agency responsible for collecting and analyzing various data surrounding the job market—endured a severe confidence crisis following unprecedented political interference from the president, which culminated in the Aug. 2025 firing of BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after a dismal jobs report that Trump claimed—without evidence—included data “rigged in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.” He then nominated E.J. Antoni, a conservative economist with little professional experience, who, according to reporting by Politico, also attended the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol. Trump was forced to withdraw Antoni amid criticism.

“A lot of people don’t trust BLS anymore,” Sonderling reportedly conceded at the Palm Beach event. “I’ve made a commitment to reform that and be much more transparent on how some of these revisions and job data are done.”