AI Shifts Expectations for Entry Level Jobs

“AI just isn’t going to take your job. The one who makes use of AI goes to take your job.”

That is an concept that has turn out to be a chorus for, amongst others, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has publicly made the prediction a number of instances since October 2023. In the meantime, different AI builders and stalwarts say the expertise will eliminate countless entry-level jobs. These predictions have come similtaneously stories of layoffs at firms together with IBM and Amazon, inflicting anxiousness for tech staff—particularly these beginning their careers, whose duties are sometimes extra simply automated.

Early stories have borne out a few of these anxieties in employment information. For instance, entry-level hiring on the 15 greatest tech corporations fell 25 p.c from 2023 to 2024, in keeping with a report from SignalFire final Could. Nonetheless, it’s unclear what the long-term results will probably be, or whether or not hiring cuts are actually a result of AI. As an illustration, whereas Meta laid off 600 employees from its AI division in October (and continued hiring different AI researchers), OpenAI started hiring junior software engineers.

In 2026, all new graduates might face a more durable job market within the United States. Employers’ ranking of the job marketplace for school graduates is now at its most pessimistic since 2020, in keeping with information from the Nationwide Affiliation of Schools and Employers (NACE) Job Outlook 2026 survey. Nevertheless, 49 p.c of respondents nonetheless think about the job market “good” or “superb.”

So, what does the rise of generative AI imply for early-career engineers?

“It is a tectonic shift,” says Hugo Malan, president of the science, engineering, technology and telecom reporting unit inside the staffing company Kelly Companies. AI agents aren’t poised to interchange staff one-to-one, although. As an alternative, there will probably be a realignment of which jobs are wanted, and what these roles appear to be.

How Jobs Are Altering

When publicly accessible AI instruments first arrived, Malan says the expectation was that jobs like call-center roles could be most weak. “However what no person predicted was that the largest influence by far could be on programmers,” a development he attributes to the comparatively solitary and extremely structured nature of the work. He notes that, whereas different financial circumstances additionally issue into the job market, the tempo of programmer employment decline has accelerated since generative AI got here on the scene. In the US, general programmer employment fell a dramatic 27.5 percent between 2023 and 2025, in keeping with information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics. However employment for software program builders—a definite, extra design-oriented place within the authorities information—solely fell 0.3 p.c in the identical interval.

On the identical time, some positions, akin to information security analyst and AI engineer are literally rising, Malan says. “There’s been this gorgeous dramatic readjustment of the job panorama, even with as slender a subject as IT. Inside IT, some jobs have exploded, like InfoSec analysts have grown in double digits, whereas programmers declined double digits” over the previous few years, he says. (Finally, Malan says he expects generative AI to have an effect on all mental work.)

Job duties additionally look like altering. For latest graduates pursuing roles labeled as software-engineering jobs, “they’re not essentially simply coding,” says Jamie Grant, senior affiliate director for the engineering crew on the University of Pennsylvania’s career services. “There tends to be a lot higher-order pondering and data of the software-development life cycle,” in addition to a must work with different events, akin to understanding consumer and shopper calls for, she says.

Utilizing AI to Your Benefit

In her work advising Penn college students, Grant hears issues about AI’s results on the job market from many engineering college students and their mother and father. However throughout conversations with them, she says she tries to keep up an ethos of “we are able to make this work for us, not in opposition to us.”

In keeping with a report from the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, jobs involving duties that might be automated with AI look like more susceptible to early-career employment dips than these the place AI augments an worker’s capability to carry out their job. The NACE data helps this: Sixty-one p.c of employers say they don’t seem to be changing entry-level jobs with AI, whereas 41 p.c are discussing or planning to enhance these jobs with AI inside the subsequent 5 years.

Over the previous few years, computer-programmer employment in the US has dropped sharply—however general employment within the computing trade hasn’t seen the identical decline.

“Take into consideration an exoskeleton that you might put on that permits you to raise 1,000 kilos,” Grant says. “AI must be, simply because the individuals at Stanford say, an augmentation to your work, to your higher-order critical-thinking abilities.” That being stated, she advises college students to be cautious of the dangers, akin to sharing delicate or proprietary info with a chatbot.

At this level, Grant thinks proficiency with AI instruments is an unwritten expectation of many employers. However college students and early-career staff also needs to acknowledge the place AI can’t assist. “AI can’t essentially be with you in that second of negotiation or of client-relationship improvement,” she says. “You continue to want to have the ability to carry out at your highest degree of capabilities.” And foundational skills like downside fixing and communication are persistently prioritized by employers.

How Training Must Change

With AI instruments performing extra of the “grunt work” that has served as a coaching floor for early-career staff, expectations for latest graduates are excessive. Prior to now, junior engineers have cultivated proficiency whereas doing easier, extra task-oriented work. “But when all of these are going to get taken over, it’s essential slot in at the next degree virtually from day one,” Malan says. This leaves latest graduates in a tough spot.

To assist college students put together, the schooling system will seemingly want to alter, as an example by encouraging college students to turn out to be proficient using AI and tackle extra hands-on, experiential studying.

Right now’s employers are searching for demonstrated abilities, says Grant. “Should you’re simply going to class and doing initiatives and possibly getting an amazing GPA, that’s wonderful. However you additionally have to be making use of what you’re studying,” she says. Business expertise and demonstrated proficiencies are among the many prime components thought of by employers surveyed in NACE’s Job Outlook 2026.

One resolution might even lie in totally completely different academic fashions, like apprenticeship. “Usually, college students in a extra conventional computer-software diploma program get lots of theoretical data,” however they could not have a lot expertise constructing software program on a crew, says Mike Roberts, founder and CEO of the nonprofit Creating Coding Careers. Latest graduates is probably not able to ship code on day one—however AI can. Apprenticeship permits college students to be taught on the job in a structured program, and helps “to way more successfully shut the expertise hole,” Roberts says.

Coaching the subsequent era of people may also higher serve the long-term pursuits of employers, he says. In right this moment’s software engineering, many firms are usually short-sighted of their hiring, pondering extra of the subsequent quarter than 4 or 5 years down the road. However “for those who don’t practice new early entrants into the market, you’ll ultimately haven’t any extra individuals turning into mid-levels,” says Roberts. “It’s very myopic.”

Additionally, AI can assist ramp up new workers sooner than ever. “I discover it an thrilling time, as a result of it’s by no means been sooner to construct high-quality software program,” Roberts says. “But it surely’s bizarre that people should not seeing the advantage of continuous to put money into people.”