There are growing signs that artificial intelligence poses a real threat to a substantial number of the entry-level jobs that normally serve as the first step for each new generation of young workers. Uncertainty around tariffs and global trade are only likely to accelerate that pressure, just as millions of 2025 graduates enter the work force.
We saw what happened in the 1980s when our manufacturing sector steeply declined. Now it is our office workers who are staring down the same kind of technological and economic disruption.
Breaking first is the bottom rung of the career ladder. In tech, advanced coding tools are creeping into the tasks of writing simple code and debugging — the ways junior developers gain experience. In law firms, junior paralegals and first-year associates who once cut their teeth on document review are handing weeks of work over to A.I. tools to complete in a matter of hours. And across retailers, A.I. chatbots and automated customer service tools are taking on duties once assigned to young associates.
These changes coincide with a shift appearing in the latest employment numbers. The unemployment rate for college grads has risen 30 percent since September 2022, compared with about 18 percent for all workers. And while LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence Index, a measure of job and career confidence across nearly 500,000 professionals, is hitting new lows amid general uncertainty, members of Generation Z are more pessimistic about their futures than any other age group out there. Meanwhile, in our recent survey of over 3,000 executives on LinkedIn at the vice president level or higher, 63 percent agreed that A.I. will eventually take on some of the mundane tasks currently allocated to their entry-level employees.
Virtually all jobs will experience some impacts, but office jobs are expected to feel the biggest crunch: Our research suggests that professionals with more advanced degrees are more likely to see their jobs disrupted than those without. While the technology sector is feeling the first waves of change, reflecting A.I.’s mass adoption in this field, the erosion of traditional entry-level tasks is expected to play out in fields like finance, travel, food and professional services, too.
Companies are not doing away with these jobs overnight. And we haven’t yet seen definitive evidence that A.I. is the reason for the shaky entry-level job market; economic uncertainty plays a major role. Eventually, A.I. will create plenty of new jobs — the World Economic Forum predicts that number could be as high as 78 million more jobs, even after predicted job losses. In our survey, executives on LinkedIn still believe that entry-level employees bring fresh ideas and new thinking that is valuable to their businesses.