{"id":10693,"date":"2025-06-06T11:40:07","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T11:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=10693"},"modified":"2025-06-06T11:40:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T11:40:08","slug":"ai-risks-broken-career-ladder-for-college-graduates-some-experts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=10693","title":{"rendered":"AI risks ‘broken’ career ladder for college graduates, some experts say"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Artificial intelligence<\/a> could upend entry-level work as recent college graduates<\/a> enter the job market, eliminating many positions at the bottom of the white-collar career ladder or at least reshaping them, some experts told ABC News.<\/p>\n

Such forecasts follow yearslong advances in AI-fueled chatbots<\/a>, and declarations from some company executives about the onset of AI automation.<\/p>\n

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, which created an AI model called Claude, told Axios<\/a> last week that technology could cut U.S. entry-level jobs by half within five years.<\/p>\n

When Business Insider laid off 21% of its staff last week, CEO Barbara Ping said<\/a> the company would go “all in on AI” in an effort to “scale and operate more efficiently.”<\/p>\n

Analysts who spoke to ABC News said AI could replace or reorient entry-level jobs in some white-collar fields targeted by college graduates, such as computer programming and law.<\/p>\n

Current job woes for this cohort, they added, likely owe in part to economic conditions beyond technology. Many blue-collar and other hands-on jobs will remain largely untouched by AI, they said, noting that tech-savvy young workers may be best positioned to fill new jobs that do incorporate AI.<\/p>\n

“We’re in the flux of dramatic change,” said Lynn Wu, a professor of operations, information and decisions at the University of Pennsylvania. “I sympathize with college graduates. In the short run, they may stay with mom and dad for a while. But in the long run, they’ll be fine. They’re AI natives.”<\/p>\n

Over the early months of 2025, the job market for recent college graduates “deteriorated noticeably,” the New York<\/a> Federal Reserve said<\/a> in April. It did not provide a reason for the trend.<\/p>\n

The unemployment rate for recent college graduates reached 5.8%, its highest level since 2021, while the underemployment rate soared above 40%, the New York Fed said.<\/p>\n

Youth unemployment likely stems from trends in the broader economy rather than AI, Anu Madgavkar, the head of labor market research at the McKinsey Global Institute, told ABC News<\/p>\n

The softening job market coincides with business uncertaint<\/a>y and gloomy economic forecasts<\/a> elicited by President Donald Trump’s tariff policy.<\/p>\n

“It’s not surprising we’re seeing this unemployment for young people,” Madgavkar said. “There is a lot of economic uncertainty.”<\/p>\n

Still, entry-level tasks in white collar professions stand at serious risk from AI, analysts said, pointing to the technology’s capacity to perform written and computational tasks as opposed to manual work.<\/p>\n

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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei looks on as he takes part in a session on AI during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, on Jan. 23, 2025.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Fabrice Coffrini\/AFP via Getty Images, FILE<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

AI could replace work previously performed by low-level employees, such as legal assistants compiling relevant precedent for a case or computer programmers writing a basic set of code, Madgavkar said.<\/p>\n

“Is the bleeding edge or the first type of work to be hit a little more skewed toward entry-level, more basic work getting automated right now? That’s probably true,” Madgavkar said. “You could have fewer people getting a foothold.”<\/p>\n

Speaking bluntly, Wu said: “The biggest problem is that the career ladder is being broken.”<\/p>\n

For the most part, however, Madgavkar said entry-level positions would change rather than disappear. Managers will prize problem-solving and analysis over tasks dependent on sheer effort, she added, noting the required set of skills will likely include a capacity to use AI.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think it means we’ll have no demand for entry-level workers or massively less demand,” Madgavakar said. “I just think expectations for young people to use these tools will accelerate very quickly.”<\/p>\n

Some jobs and tasks remain largely immune to AI automation, analysts said, pointing to hands-on work such as manual labor and trades, as well as professional roles like doctors and upper management.<\/p>\n

Isabella Loaiza, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies AI and the workforce, co-authored a study examining the shift in jobs and tasks across the U.S. economy between 2016 and 2024.<\/p>\n

Rather than dispense with qualities like critical thinking and empathy, workplace technology heightened the need for workers who exhibit those attributes, Loaiza said, citing demand for occupations like early-education teachers, home health aides and therapists.<\/p>\n

“It is true we’re seeing AI having an impact on white-collar work instead of more blue-collar work,” Loaiza said.<\/p>\n

But, she added, “We found that jobs that are very human-intensive are probably more robust.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artificial intelligence could upend entry-level work as recent college graduates enter the job market, eliminating many positions at the bottom of the white-collar career ladder or at least reshaping them, some experts told ABC News. Such forecasts follow yearslong advances in AI-fueled chatbots, and declarations from some company executives about the onset of AI automation. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10693"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10695,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10693\/revisions\/10695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}