July 1, 2026
At the halfway point of the year, it’s time for California employers to review what is new and what lies ahead in state employment law. California’s AI Unemployment Tracker has gone live. Minimum wage increases take effect July 1, 2026, and a significant wave of new employment laws are under consideration by the California Legislature.
California AI Unemployment Tracker Goes Live
On May 21, 2026, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Executive Order N-6-26, directing a sweeping set of state-level actions aimed at studying, managing and mitigating the workforce impacts of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. (See our May Alert.) Among many other directives, the executive order required the California Employment Development Department (EDD) to launch a public dashboard showing AI’s impact on employment across various sectors using unemployment insurance data by August 19, 2026. The executive order also directed the EDD to make recommendations for possible additional information and actions by employers as part of the WARN notice procedure. The California Policy Lab has now launched an online California AI Unemployment Tracker to monitor how artificial intelligence is affecting unemployment in the state. The dashboard provides the public with sector-level information about AI-related labor market trends, including where job displacement, hiring shifts or workforce changes may be emerging.