Fostering AI resilience in the EU labour market
The world is entering a new technological era, with artificial intelligence (AI) emerging as a general-purpose technology at an unprecedented speed. With around a third of people in the European Union using generative AI tools in 2025, this technology is already impacting how we work, our relationship to work and labour demand in certain sectors. Unlike previous waves of automation, the utility of generative AI extends into cognitive, non-routine tasks, raising novel questions about how different occupations are valued and how education and training systems should adapt.
In 2026, the EU must confront these changes amid economic and geopolitical uncertainty, war, demographic and climate crises, and declining trust in democratic institutions. While the EU AI Act2 represents a first step in regulating how AI systems are used in the EU, AI’s implications for Europe’s broader political economy require new thinking and policy frameworks ready to ensure societal resilience and mitigate potential harms. Against this backdrop and building on the EPC’s work on digital transformations, this brief provides an early data-driven assessment of the EU labour market’s readiness for AI. Following a review of EU legislative action, institutional capacity and policy priorities in this field, and of the evidence base of predicted exposure to AI in today’s labour market, we analyse patterns of AI exposure and complementarity across the Union. In doing so, we assess positive or negative labour market effects along geographic and demographic lines including gender, education, age and income. The brief concludes with concrete, actionable policy recommendations aimed at addressing this transformation from the perspective of equality, skills development, demographic change and the societal implications for welfare state policies.
Read the full Policy Brief here.
Samuel Goodger is Policy Analyst in the Health and Societal Resilience Programme (HSR).
Pietro Valetto is a Junior Academic Fellow at the European Policy Centre and Doctoral Candidate at the University of Antwerp.
Elizabeth Kuiper is Associate Director and Head of the Health and Societal Resilience Programme (HSR).
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