LinkedIn’s chief economic opportunity officer, Aneesh Raman, warned that AI is gutting entry-level jobs just as young workers are trying to claw their way in.

He wrote in The New York Times, calling out sectors like tech, law, and retail for binning junior roles in favour of large language models and automation for  “Breaking the bottom rung of the career ladder.” 

It’s a particularly dumb move for an industry that bleats endlessly about the skills gap and pipeline problems. If there’s no space for junior developers to get their start, who exactly is supposed to become a senior engineer in five or ten years?

According to LinkedIn’s own data, college graduate unemployment is up 30 per cent since September 2022. That compares to 18 per cent across the workforce. Generation Z, it turns out, has good reason to be gloomy.

Raman said a recent LinkedIn survey showed 63 per cent of execs believe AI will soon take over the scut work entry-level roles usually involve. Oddly, they think it’s highly-educated professionals who’ll cop the worst of it. Maybe that’s why some firms are scrambling to redesign jobs before the whole edifice caves in.

KPMG has recent grads doing tax work usually given to senior staff. Macfarlanes is letting junior lawyers have a crack at interpreting heavyweight contracts. Whether this is clever adaptation or sheer desperation is anyone’s guess.

The cost of keeping young talent in limbo is real. Raman reckoned delayed entry into the workforce can slash earnings by $22,000 (about €20,300) over a decade. And the longer this AI-driven short-termism persists, the more likely it becomes that entire industries will be left wondering where their next generation of talent went.

They didn’t vanish. They just never got hired in the first place.