AI is ‘breaking’ entry-level jobs that Gen Z workers need to launch careers, LinkedIn exec warns – He likened the disruption to the decline of manufacturing in the 1980s.
https://fortune.com/2025/05/25/ai-entry-level-jobs-gen-z-careers-young-workers-linkedin/
19 Comments
From the article
* **LinkedIn’s chief economic opportunity officer, Aneesh Raman**, said artificial intelligence is increasingly threatening the types of jobs that historically have served as stepping stones for young workers who are just beginning their careers. He likened the disruption to the decline of manufacturing in the 1980s.
As millions of students get ready to graduate this spring, their prospects for landing that first job that helps launch their careers is looking dimmer.
In addition to an economy that’s slowing amid tariff-induced uncertainty, artificial intelligence is threatening entry-level work that traditionally has served as stepping stones, according to LinkedIn’s chief economic opportunity officer, Aneesh Raman, who likened the shift to the decline of manufacturing in the 1980s.
“Now it is our office workers who are staring down the same kind of technological and economic disruption,” he wrote in a recent [*New York Times* op-ed](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/opinion/linkedin-ai-entry-level-jobs.html). “Breaking first is the bottom rung of the career ladder.”
Just work in a trade.
(And by “trade” I mean trade your body for money on Onlyfans)
Federal jobs program. Public transportation, Civilian Conservation Corps, etc.
Not like these jobs sites are doing much but harvesting and selling your demographics to advertisers anyway.
Recruiter culture already screwed this all up. Instead of training new people from the ground up, they just hire recruiters to seek out *existing* talent built elsewhere. Trouble is, when everyone only wants to recruit existing talent, who the hell is actually building it?
AI is just going to make existing problems worse.
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Capitalism values money over humanity and its collective well-being — real progress is always hindered by Capitalist “progress”. Better ways to extract, more efficient ways to hoard, optimized avenues towards control; everyone in the way is just collateral.
It isn’t though.
Big Corp execs _want_ it to be that way, that is true.
AI could be mesmerizing in tightly orchestrated demos, but in reality it’s still crap and we absolutely need juniors to learn the ropes. AI is a long way from replacing the general workforce.
AI is cool, but the hype around it really needs to stop. Maybe we should start talking more about how easy AI could replace expensive corporate execs.
Lol like the pretense for bringing back manufacturing is gonna happen but software too? The states are gonna have just managers and admins fapping each other soon until there is no one left to fap
Good! Find something to do that isn’t part of the economic churn.
Ain’t just Gen Z. Some of us are trying to start new careers. Still trying to figure out how entry level = minimum 3 years experience…
Been telling everyone I know since mid-last year… The white collar entry level job market is going to get eviscerated. Companies don’t need a large pipeline of new hires to cultivate when AI can do a lot of the work that new hires are responsible for.
They’re going to cut back and just pick a handful they think has long term prospects and develop that talent, while letting AI bear the brunt of the grunt work.
It’s going to make college grads that much more challenging to find white collar positions, and the hope of recovering their cost of tuition that much harder.
Social work will always be in demand on some level because people tend to trust other people swifter than robots. Even if a robot can do basic nursing tasks people will still prefer a person helping them with life assuming a positive relationship. I work in traditional art and AI art doesn’t make a difference in how I move any more than any other mass produced art does.
Social safety in the form of basic economic necessity still needs to be ironed out, people will be okay eventually.
Corruption and evil tend to oroborus themselves eventually, step to the side and let the crash play out, maybe stick a foot out. What trip?
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I am a bachelor in communications and advertisement who graduated like 2 years ago, and many people like me have been REALLY struggling precisely because of GenAI, and some of the more available jobs are *in* GenAI, essentially wanting us to make our own and other’s careers in the field obsolete. Doesn’t help that I am from the Global South…
It felt difficult and extremely hard to get a job fresh out of school 10 years ago, I cannot even imagine present day with all the laid off work force out there and AI eliminating roles. Really feel for recent grads, take what you can get and try as hard as you can to get some kind of internship while in school still
There wasn’t space for the millenial generation to properly enter the workforce; why on earth would there be room for gen z. Can’t wait to see Alpha get the shaft in an entirely new and frightening way!
The gen zs who make money will be the ones using AI to automate something
No just AI but every direct report I have at an entry level office position is filled by boomers who hate me, the company, and complain constantly but just HAVE to get out while retired
I want to see these jobs being replaced with AI. So far, most of the news has been companies who say they are embracing AI while using it as an excuse to layoff workers.
This has been a problem for generations now. It’s just getting worse.
The “mail room” was how the Baby Boomers got their start in white collar jobs. The Secretarial Pool was how many young women proved themselves like Peggy or June Holloway on Mad Men.
Colleges being pipelines for indentured servants is generational. They’ll have unpaid intern PhD’s in Baroque Architecture to do social media management AI orchestration. I can smell it from here