Policy interventions for the future of work: do Australians want government compensation, guidance, or investment to manage technological change?

This paper examines how Australian attitudes toward the future of work shape support for policy interventions, drawing on nationally representative survey data (n = 1,035). We focus on three dimensions of technological change: displacement, deskilling, and de-intensification, and analyse how these expectations map onto preferences for investment, compensation, and steering policies. Our findings show that those concerned about displacement support a broad mix of responses, including compensation through basic income, steering through taxation of technology companies, and investment in education and training, but not limits on working hours. Concerns about deskilling are distinctively associated with fairness-based demands for taxing firms, highlighting expectations that technology developers bear responsibility for labour market disruption. By contrast, those who expect de-intensification, where technology is seen to make work safer and more compatible with private life, favour steering through working-time limits and also support training. Across all groups, investment policies receive the strongest endorsement, reflecting the dominance of skill-focused adaptation strategies in both public opinion and government agendas. These results underscore the importance of incorporating sociotropic perspectives into analyses of public preferences, revealing how collective judgments about fairness, equity, and shared responsibility condition the political feasibility of labour market reforms in response to technological change.