Boom, Bust, Rebuild: Harvard’s Rachel Lipson on Frontier Jobs

September 3, 2026, Audio: "In this episode of the Work, Redefined Podcast, Scott Jensen, who leads the Future of Work practice at Infosys Public Services, interviews Rachel Lipson, Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. Lipson argues that the US has long treated workforce development as anti-poverty policy rather than economic strategy. That framing has left the system underfunded and disconnected from the industries it's meant to serve. She introduces the concept of frontier jobs, brand new occupations created by emerging technologies, and contrasts them with retool jobs, where the occupation stays the same but the underlying skills shift. Drawing on research for her upcoming book, Lipson points to Colorado, where community colleges are extending existing optics and photonics programs into quantum computing. She also points to Northern Virginia, where the data center workforce grew out of nuclear and skilled trades expertise, and to Massachusetts, where a biotech training pipeline had to adapt quickly once federal research cuts and a retreating venture capital market shrank the jobs it was built for. She closes on a shift already underway in hiring: as AI increasingly handles resume writing, professional networks and interview presence are becoming the deciding factor in who gets hired."