How AI may be robbing new college graduates of traditional entry-level jobs

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• John Yang:

  The college class of 2025 is entering one of the most challenging job markets in years. The first three months of the year, the unemployment rate for recent college grads jumped to 5.8 percent. That`s the highest it`s been since 2021 and well above the overall unemployment rate.

  One of the challenges they`re facing is artificial intelligence, which is increasingly doing tasks that used to be assigned to entry level workers.

  Aneesh Raman is chief Economic opportunity officer at LinkedIn. He wrote a New York Times op-ed headlined I see the bottom rung of the career ladder breaking. Aneesh, what do you mean by that? The bottom rung of the career ladder breaking?

• Aneesh Raman, Chief Economic Opportunity Officer, LinkedIn:

  I wrote this piece because entry level jobs that first rung on the career ladder are breaking down a bit. And I think we all should be talking about that more. What we`re seeing right now for new grads is sort of this perfect storm. Between the uncertainty in the macro environment and the disruption, we are starting to see more and more day by day from AI taking on more tasks of entry level work.

  Those are tasks like reviewing documents if you`re at a law firm, debugging code, if you`re at a tech company handling basic customer service. Across so many sectors, those tasks are going to AI. And so together that with the macro uncertainty is creating, as you said, one of the most challenging job markets for young people in decades.

• John Yang:

  Are there consequences of someone who has a hard time trying to find that first job in their chosen field?

• Aneesh Raman:

  Huge consequences. I mean, all of us who aren`t in our first job now can go back to our first job and think about the lessons you learned, the mentorship you gained, just being able to understand how worked at the place you were at and how you could think about what that next job was.

  We also know in terms of economic mobility that the effects of a stalled out career at the start can last for decades. Lower lifetime earnings. But also companies, as long as they`re going to need humans leading these companies in the future, they`re going to risk losing that pipeline if they don`t reimagine entry level work, increase the value of the tasks that entry level workers are doing and help them on a new journey, a new career path.

• John Yang:

  Reimagining entry level work. Talk about that. How can entry level work be fixed?

• Aneesh Raman:

  Yeah, we talked about a couple of examples in the piece. KPMG is now giving new grads higher level tax work that used to go to people that had, I think two or three years worth of experience because AI is handling a lot of the grunt work.

  McFarland`s this law firm in the UK, they`re training early career lawyers on complex contract interpretation, not just basic document review. If you think about it, a lot of entry level jobs are basic jobs with basic tasks. All we need to do on the employer side is up level the tasks that we give entry level workers and be more deliberately appreciative of the know how they bring.

  This generation is incredibly resilient and adaptive. They know AI tools and technology better than probably any other generation. Educators also have to adapt.

  And so we also talk about American University, the business school in DC, but also community colleges across the country who are helping students learn more and more AI fluency, AI proficiency. And that just basically means what are these AI tools? How do they help me do the job I`m doing and what does it mean for this sort of up leveling of that job?

  We`ve got to have that baked into all education everywhere and then help people understand what is that new type of work they want to do as they go into the workplace.

• John Yang:

  What`s your advice to members of the class of `25 who are looking for their first jobs now?

• Aneesh Raman:

  Careers are no longer ladders that are predictable and where you have to have the right pedigree signal the right degree from the right university, the right job title at the right employer, the right network that we know for a lot of socioeconomic reasons, people don`t have those right signals. That`s no longer the path up.

  The path up is more like a climbing wall. 70 percent of the skills for the average job according to our data will have changed by 2030. So you don`t need to have a five or 10 year plan, you just need to have a today plan. And you`re going to have, according to our data, twice as many jobs than professionals did 15 years ago. So there`s only one thing. Be a learn it all.

  Become really fluent in AI and the tools and become really fluent in yourself, your story of self professionally. What are the skills that you have that you want to hone, that the world needs? What`s the curiosity that`s going to drive expertise that`s going to increase the value of the work you do, just be curious and you`re going to be okay.

• John Yang:

  And someone who can`t get a job in their chosen field shouldn`t worry. They shouldn`t think, well, I`m not going to get what I want.

• Aneesh Raman:

  Well, I know it`s never helpful to say, don`t worry when you`re worried about not having a job. And so, you know, for all sorts of just economic dignity, agency reasons, people need a paycheck, they need a job. So you got to find that job. And all of that is starting to change. People can use AI tools to help find the job that`s a better fit, to help explain their fit better, we know that recruiters are increasingly filtering for things like skills, not just those pedigree signals.

  So just figure out how each day you`re learning more, you`re growing more, and you`re going to learn and grow in part by trying to get a job that you don`t get and figuring out why, trying to go for a job you wouldn`t have gone for otherwise in terms of a career or a sector that you wouldn`t have thought is one that you want to be in. You`re going to learn a lot through your failures, and so you just get accustomed to that as you go through this.

• John Yang:

  Aneesh Raman from LinkedIn. Thank you very much.

• Aneesh Raman:

  Thanks for having me.

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