AI’s hidden recession: How fewer jobs and cultural backlash create a governance crisis

Artificial intelligence is reshaping work faster than policy or leadership can adapt. U.S. companies report record productivity, yet payrolls barely rise. Goldman Sachs estimates that AI automation could affect the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs worldwide. Investors are cheering the efficiency. But history suggests that when work becomes scarce, societies ration opportunity, and women often pay the price.

The pattern is familiar. During the Great Depression, dozens of U.S. states and school districts enacted “marriage bars,” policies that barred married women from employment or forced them to resign upon marriage, claiming to “protect” male breadwinners. After World War II, governments closed wartime child-care centers and urged women out of factories so returning soldiers