AI Is Already Eating Away at EntryLevel Jobs

The Subtle Shift You Might Not NoticeUntil You Do

If you’re just finishing school and stepping into the job market, you might feel like the ground is shifting under your feet. It’s not just the usual anxiety of résumés disappearing into the void or awkward Zoom interviews that go nowhere. A new study from Stanford suggests that artificial intelligence is actively dimming the prospects for entrylevel workers.

That’s a big claim. For years, the talk around AI was that it would mostly take the boring parts of our jobs and make us more “productive.” But if you’re twentythree, trying to land your first role in marketing or data analysis, the “boring parts” are exactly what you’d normally be hired to do. Formatting spreadsheets, summarizing reports, drafting routine emailsthose are the classic steppingstones that help you climb toward more complex tasks. If AI handles all of that, what’s left for the junior hire?

The Stories Behind the Data

We’ve heard scattered anecdotes for a whilecompanies posting fewer entrylevel openings, interns quietly dropped in favor of automation, freelance contracts drying up on platforms like Upwork. The Stanford research gives those stories weight: it shows a measurable slowdown in hiring for certain positions that used to serve as gateways for younger workers.

Think about graphic design. A small marketing agency that once hired a junior designer to crank out social media posts may now lean on Canva’s AI features or MidJourney prompts. Or consider customer service. Instead of bringing on a batch of trainees to answer calls, companies can install a chatbot that handles 70% of inquiries. Sure, the most complicated cases still go to humans, but the volume of entrylevel work shrinks dramatically.

A Tale of Two Studies

Interestingly, not all reports line up. MIT’s State of AI in Business 2025 paints a slightly different picture. According to their findings, AI isn’t primarily eliminating domestic jobs yetit’s replacing outsourced and offshore work. In other words, the first wave of displacement is happening in call centers in Manila or datalabeling shops in Nairobi, not necessarily in Chicago or Atlanta.

That’s partly true. If you’ve ever had a customer service chat where the responses were oddly smooth, almost too scripted, there’s a decent chance the “agent” wasn’t in a cubicle abroadit was an AI model. But that doesn’t exactly comfort a young American worker. If AI can replace a contract worker overseas today, why wouldn’t it come for the domestic entrylevel role tomorrow?

Why EntryLevel Roles Matter More Than We Admit

Some might shrug and say, “Well, those are lowvalue tasks anyway.” That misses the point. Entrylevel work has never been glamorous, but it has always served as training ground. You learn the basics, you build professional instincts, you figure out office politicsall while doing the grunt work. If those jobs disappear, there’s a pipeline problem: how do people gain the experience to eventually take on midlevel and senior roles?

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend who works in accounting. He said that when he started, he spent endless hours manually checking invoices against spreadsheets. It was tedious, but he learned to spot tiny discrepancies, a skill that now helps him catch more complex financial errors. If AI had done all that numbercrunching back then, he might never have developed that eye for detail.

The Coming Recession Question

Economist Neil Irwin has raised a darker possibility: what happens when the next downturn hits? History suggests that recessions are prime times for companies to double down on automation. In the early 2000s, manufacturers replaced thousands of jobs with robotics. After 2008, many firms “temporarily” leaned on software that eventually became permanent.

If AI tools are already creeping into whitecollar entrylevel tasks during relatively stable times, a downturn could accelerate that shift into overdrive. Instead of freezing hiring for six months, a company might decide it never needs those junior analyst roles againbecause ChatGPT or its successor can do the bulk of that work faster and cheaper.

A Question of Geography and Fairness

It’s worth pointing out that AI’s impact isn’t evenly spread. Workers in big tech hubs might see fewer openings in marketing, coding, or data entry. Meanwhile, jobs requiring inperson presenceelectricians, nurses, hospitality workersare less affected, at least for now. This creates an awkward dynamic: if you’re in a field that can be digitized, AI looms larger.

There’s also a moral wrinkle. Some argue that replacing offshore workers first is better for U.S. employment. But think about what that means for the global economy. A family in the Philippines who depended on call center work suddenly has no safety net because a bot took their job. That displacement is just as real, even if it feels distant to those of us stateside.

What Companies Aren’t Saying Out Loud

Few companies openly admit to cutting roles because of AI. They talk about “efficiency” or “freeing up staff for creative work.” And sometimes that’s trueAI can complement human workers. But there’s also a more pragmatic calculation: if AI can generate decent first drafts or triage customer questions, then why pay a fresh college grad to do it?

The result is a quieter shift. Fewer job postings for junior roles. More “experience required” openings, even for positions that used to be open to newcomers. For a generation of workers, the ladder is missing its first few rungs.

So What Happens Next?

Predicting the longterm impact is tricky. Maybe AI will carve out new entrylevel categories we can’t see yetroles focused on training, supervising, or correcting AI outputs. Some companies already hire “AI auditors” or “prompt engineers,” though those are still niche.

Or maybe we’ll hit a wall where the absence of junior employees creates gaps higher up. After all, someone has to become the next manager, the next expert. If AI wipes out the apprenticeship phase, companies might find themselves short of qualified people ten years down the line.

The Takeaway

AI isn’t triggering mass layoffs of accountants or paralegals overnight. But it’s quietly squeezing the bottom of the labor market, particularly where people used to get their start. And that’s the piece worth paying attention tonot just for workers, but for companies and policymakers too. Because if you erase the entrylevel door into an industry, you don’t just keep out the internsyou risk starving the entire profession of future leaders.

Open Your Mind !!!

Source: Axios