AI Shifts Expectations for Entry Level Jobs

“AI will not be going to take your job. The one that 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 occasions since October 2023. In the meantime, different AI builders and stalwarts say the know-how will eliminate countless entry-level jobs. These predictions have come similtaneously experiences of layoffs at firms together with IBM and Amazon, inflicting nervousness for tech employees—particularly these beginning their careers, whose obligations are sometimes extra simply automated.

Early experiences have borne out a few of these anxieties in employment knowledge. For instance, entry-level hiring on the 15 largest tech corporations fell 25 % from 2023 to 2024, in accordance with a report from SignalFire final Might. Nonetheless, it’s unclear what the long-term results shall be, or whether or not hiring cuts are actually a result of AI. As an example, 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 could 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 accordance with knowledge from the Nationwide Affiliation of Faculties and Employers (NACE) Job Outlook 2026 survey. Nonetheless, 49 % of respondents nonetheless take into account 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 Providers. AI agents aren’t poised to switch employees one-to-one, although. As an alternative, there shall 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 can be most susceptible. “However what no person predicted was that the largest affect by far can be on programmers,” a pattern he attributes to the comparatively solitary and extremely structured nature of the work. He notes that, whereas different financial situations 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 accordance with knowledge from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics. However employment for software program builders—a definite, extra design-oriented place within the authorities knowledge—solely fell 0.3 % in the identical interval.

On the similar time, some positions, similar 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 slim 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. (Ultimately, Malan says he expects generative AI to have an effect on all mental work.)

Job obligations 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 workforce on the University of Pennsylvania’s career services. “There tends to be a lot higher-order pondering and information of the software-development life cycle,” in addition to a have to work with different events, similar 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 take care of an ethos of “we will make this work for us, not in opposition to us.”

In accordance with a report from the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, jobs involving duties that may very well be automated with AI look like more susceptible to early-career employment dips than these the place AI augments an worker’s capacity to carry out their job. The NACE data helps this: Sixty-one % of employers say they aren’t changing entry-level jobs with AI, whereas 41 % 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 could possibly put on that means that you can raise 1,000 kilos,” Grant says. “AI ought to be, simply because the individuals at Stanford say, an augmentation to your work, to your higher-order critical-thinking expertise.” That being mentioned, she advises college students to be cautious of the dangers, similar 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 employees 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 growth,” she says. “You continue to want to have the ability to carry out at your highest degree of capabilities.” And foundational skills like drawback fixing and communication are constantly 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 employees, expectations for latest graduates are excessive. Up 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, you could slot in at the next degree virtually from day one,” Malan says. This leaves latest graduates in a troublesome 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 this moment’s employers are searching for demonstrated expertise, says Grant. “If you happen to’re simply going to class and doing tasks and perhaps getting an amazing GPA, that’s wonderful. However you additionally have to be making use of what you’re studying,” she says. Trade expertise and demonstrated proficiencies are among the many prime elements thought of by employers surveyed in NACE’s Job Outlook 2026.

One resolution could even lie in fully completely different instructional fashions, like apprenticeship. “Typically, college students in a extra conventional computer-software diploma program get plenty of theoretical information,” however they might not have a lot expertise constructing software program on a workforce, 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 rather more successfully shut the expertise hole,” Roberts says.

Coaching the subsequent era of people may additionally higher serve the long-term pursuits of employers, he says. In as we speak’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 “when you don’t practice new early entrants into the market, you’ll finally don’t have any extra individuals changing into mid-levels,” says Roberts. “It’s very myopic.”

Additionally, AI may also help 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 folk are usually not seeing the advantage of continuous to put money into people.”