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For Joshua Smith, 28, landing an entry-level job has started to feel more like a battle against algorithms than a test of his qualifications.
“It hit me that finding an entry-level job was harder than I had expected by the 13th application towards a local restaurant,” said Smith, whom Canadian Affairs agreed to not identify by his real name to protect his employment prospects.
“The entire thing felt hopeless.”
Smith, who is currently still a student at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, says his school actually coached students on how to navigate AI-driven hiring systems.
“Uni has taught us to put keywords on our résumé that can trigger the AI into considering us, and avoiding keywords that can kick us out,” he said, referring to automated résumé screening tools increasingly used by Canadian employers.
“Ironically, they’ve also taught us not to use AI because after the AI checks for candidates, an actual human will read it to filter even more.”
Labour market experts say Smith’s struggle has become a familiar one in Canada. AI is not the sole reason young people are struggling to find work, but it is steadily reshaping entry-level jobs in ways that could weaken career pathways.
“You can’t get a job now, [so] you take a job that’s under your skill level or maybe outside of your domain,” said Graham Dobbs, a senior research associate at the Conference Board of Canada, a research organization.
“Maybe that delays your career.”
‘Career scarring’
Gen Zers, born between 1997 and 2012, are entering the labour market at a moment of unusually high uncertainty.
In Canada, unemployment among 15- to 24-year-olds hit nearly 18 per cent in August, the highest since the pandemic.
While only 12 per cent of Canadian businesses reported using AI to produce or deliver services last spring, that was up from six per cent just one year before.
Statistics Canada research suggests AI has not yet caused broad job losses, even in AI-exposed occupations. But employment growth has been weaker for younger and less-educated workers from 2022 to 2025 — the period when tools such as ChatGPT became widely available.
Experts say mass adoption of AI risks making job prospects harder for these workers, who are most likely to perform the routine, rules-based tasks that AI is best able to complete.
“We’re already seeing fewer positions [in clerical and administrative work], because a lot of those tasks are being complemented by AI,” said Tricia Williams, research director at the Future Skills Centre, a labour-market focused research hub.
“Whereas before you might have had an admin supporting two executives, now maybe they can support four executives because they have those productivity tools to help them … I think we’re expecting to see the numbers even further decrease in those areas.”
Other AI-exposed jobs include customer service, junior content and marketing roles, routine digital work, and professional and scientific services.
Sophia Wright, a 29-year-old based in Charlotte, North Carolina, who also spoke under a pseudonym, described a brutal market for early-career tech workers.
After eight months of unemployment, Wright finally settled for a part-time IT role, “despite it being not the right fit.”
“Entry-level jobs are getting taken away,” she said.
Wright says she will continue to search for a position that better aligns with her career ambitions, despite the poor jobs outlook.
“I have reasonable suspicion to believe that AI and offshoring and outsourcing are the culprits here and making life difficult for people like me who went to school and worked hard,” said Wright, who completed a degree in information technology in 2020.
“There’s an element of disillusionment at play regarding my career,” she added.
Talent pipelines
Dobbs, of the Conference Board of Canada, says AI can eliminate entry-level jobs even when it is not used to directly replace junior workers’ tasks. Companies may simply restructure their work processes to become leaner and flatter.
“Firms may cut or never create entry-level roles, even if AI isn’t literally ‘doing a junior employee’s job’,” he said.
In June, Vancouver-based software company Klue Labs Inc. laid off nearly half of its more than 200-employee workforce saying it would be relying more on generative AI for content writing and junior support.
Jobs that require a physical presence or involve unpredictable work conditions — such as landscaping, food services, accommodation and health-care support — may be the least vulnerable to disruption.
However, these positions often provide few pathways to higher-paying careers, notes Williams, of the Future Skills Centre.
Cutting entry-level work could also backfire for employers.
“[When] more experienced workers move companies or retire, who replaces them?” Dobbs said.
“Cutting junior roles and entry level jobs poses a serious challenge for … even a small organization. What’s the succession plan around that?”
AI isn’t the only problem
Not everyone is raising the alarm over AI disruption.
Chris Roberts, of the Canadian Labour Congress, says youth work precarity is nothing new and is not clearly attributable to AI.
“Young people are often less hired and first fired, and they work in industries in which there is characteristically high turnover,” said Roberts, who directs the labour organization’s Social & Economic Policy department.
Roberts pointed to generally unfavourable economic conditions and the uncertainty created by the trade war as factors behind low hiring.
“AI adoption isn’t really rocketing ahead in Canada, to put it mildly, so it’s hard to get … strong evidence that this is technologically fueled, as opposed to a general problem we’ve been seeing for some quarters, which is just generally weak hiring, and a real reluctance to take on young people,” he said.
Dobbs notes AI is also creating opportunities for young people who develop new skills.
“There is now a demand for skills that interface with not just AI prompting, but the ability to understand and apply it,” he said. “Current employees … are busy doing their day-to-day. They don’t have time to necessarily adapt or learn these new ways of working.”
Looking ahead, Williams sees potential for Canadian youth job training programs modeled after international initiatives.
Since 2013, the EU’s Youth Guarantee has required national governments to ensure people under 30 receive a quality job, education, apprenticeship or traineeship within four months of leaving school or becoming unemployed. It is funded through a mix of national spending and EU support programs.
In December, the U.K. launched a guaranteed jobs scheme that commits £820 million to ensuring young people receive jobs training and work experience.
On Jan. 22, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced an upcoming AI strategy in a national address. Carney touted AI’s potential to improve health care, education and government services, but cautioned that realizing its benefits for workers will require major reforms.
“[AI] can empower Canadians with new skills for more fulfilling jobs,” he said. “Realizing that potential will require fundamental reforms to our education system — how we do skills training — and to our social welfare system.”
In the meantime, students like Smith will just have to find jobs the hard way.
“[I] thought to myself that it was entirely a better use of my time to upgrade my résumé and find nepotism contacts, rather than uselessly applying,” Smith said.
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