The Federal Reserve just picked one of the more ironic candidates to help figure out the future of American employment. Asha Sharma, who became Xbox CEO in February 2026 and promptly announced roughly 3,200 job cuts at the gaming division, will co-lead the Fed’s newly formed Productivity and Jobs task force.
She won’t be working alone. Marc Andreessen of venture capital giant a16z and Stanford economist Charles Jones, who is currently on leave at AI company Anthropic, round out the leadership trio. The task force is designed to evaluate how emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, are reshaping employment and inflation dynamics.
The task force and its curious timing
The Fed announced the appointment on July 9, 2026, just as Sharma’s Xbox restructuring was making headlines. That reorganization included 1,600 immediate layoffs as part of the broader 3,200-position reduction. Jones’s involvement adds academic heft. He’s a well-known growth economist at Stanford whose current leave at Anthropic gives him a front-row seat to the technology the task force is supposed to evaluate. Andreessen, meanwhile, brings the venture capital perspective, having spent years funding companies across AI, fintech, and crypto through a16z.
