From the sidelines of the 2026 US-Canada Summit, hosted by Eurasia Group and RBC in Toronto, GZERO's Tony Maciulis sat down with Erika McEntarfer, Distinguished Policy Fellow at Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research and former Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for a ground-level read on what the numbers are and aren't telling us.

McEntarfer describes the current moment as a potential "frozen labor market": unemployment is low because layoffs are rare, but hiring has cratered to levels last seen in 2010. On AI, she pushes back on the idea that automation is the primary culprit behind youth unemployment as the struggles facing young workers span all industries, a pattern more consistent with a broad hiring slowdown than a targeted tech disruption.

Looking ahead, McEntarfer said she remains cautiously optimistic that AI will ultimately create more jobs than it displaces, drawing on 200 years of North American economic history but acknowledged the transition may not move fast enough for workers struggling in the market today.