Standards engagement, publicly committed.
The Workforce Labor Index is being built to live for a century. That requires institutional standards alignment — not as a marketing claim, but as a documented, reproducible posture that regulators, central banks, and academic researchers can evaluate against the same frameworks that govern SOFR, the BLS CPI, and Federal Reserve reference rates.
section 01Where we stand today
WLI methodology v1.0 is explicitly mapped to the IOSCO Principles for Financial Benchmarks (PD415, 2013) — the framework written after the LIBOR scandal to make benchmark manipulation impossible. The Statement of Compliance v1.0 (published 2026-06-04) documents per-Principle alignment for all 19 Principles.
This is a SELF-DECLARED Statement, the same posture SOFR took at launch in 2018, the same posture every modern reference rate begins with. Formal third-party certification (IOSCO does not directly certify benchmarks; this is delegated to national regulators and audit firms) is the next stage in the roadmap below.
section 02The 19 IOSCO Principles — implementation status
section 03The roadmap
IOSCO PD415 Statement of Compliance v1.0
Published 2026-06-04. Per-Principle alignment for all 19 Principles. CC-BY-4.0. Self-declared, the same posture SOFR took at launch.
Open RFC process
Methodology changes go through a public 60-day comment window. The first RFC tracks the v1.0 → v1.1 transition criteria. Comments accepted at editor@workforcelaborindex.com.
Open sealed eval banks
10 categories with sealed task banks v1.0 — each with SHA-256 hash + sealing receipt. Anyone can reproduce a published AQO score from a sealed bank.
arXiv methodology preprint
Submission package being prepared. Categories: cs.LG, econ.GN, q-fin.GN. Once posted, the arXiv DOI becomes the canonical academic citation.
Working group formation
Open invitation to academics, regulators, and industry methodologists. Charter pending. Reply to editor@workforcelaborindex.com to express interest.
SOC 2 Type 1 / Type 2 audit
Type 1 audit in scope; Type 2 audit window planned. These reinforce IOSCO Principle 15 (internal controls).
BIS engagement
Bank for International Settlements (BIS) maintains the Bulletin and Working Paper series that legitimize new financial benchmarks. Engagement plan: present the WLI methodology at a relevant BIS workshop within 36 months of launch.
ISO/IEC liaison
The ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42 committee on AI standards is the right venue for AI-labor-specific standards. Plan: propose a working group on commodifiable AI labor pricing methodology.
Standards-body donation
Ultimate posture: donate the methodology and sealed banks to a recognized standards body (likely IFRS Foundation or a future AI-labor analog) so WorkForce's commercial interests are formally separable from the benchmark's integrity. Same trajectory IFRS Foundation took with the accounting standards.
section 04Open RFC process
How to propose a methodology change
Email editor@workforcelaborindex.com with subject line RFC: [your proposal]. Include: (a) the problem you’re solving, (b) the proposed change, (c) the affected sections of the methodology paper, (d) any data or precedent supporting the change.
Material RFCs receive a public response and a 60-day comment window. Accepted RFCs roll into the next methodology version (semver: minor for refinements, major for structural changes). All RFCs and their disposition are archived publicly.
What we will and won’t accept
- Will accept: methodology refinements grounded in published statistical or economic literature; new category proposals with sourcing approaches; sealed-bank improvements; conflict-of-interest mitigations; governance proposals.
- Will not accept: vendor-favorable rate adjustments; eval bank reveals; closed-source dependencies; selective audit gating.
For research, regulatory, or standards-body inquiries, write to editor@workforcelaborindex.com. Same-day response for institutional inquiries.