AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds
Updated Stanford research shows employment for workers aged 22-25 in AI-exposed occupations is now 19% below peers in less affected fields, up from 13% last year. The gap stems from lower hiring rates, not firings, and is most pronounced in jobs where AI automates tasks rather than augments them. Older workers remain largely unaffected, but lead researcher Erik Brynjolfsson warns the trend is 'real, persistent and widening,' potentially closing the on-ramp for early-career workers.
The entry-level effects we're measuring are real, persistent and widening, and I'm more worried than I was about a labor market that keeps its overall employment level while quietly closing the on-ramp for people starting their careers.
- gen220
It's challenging to disentangle the effects from AI from the cyclical supply and demand cycle of junior engineers in a post-ZIRP world.
People who are currently junior engineers (i.e. graduating class of 2024+) chose their majors in a ZIRP economy (2021 and earlier) that could not hire enough engineers fast enough, but graduated into an economy that was post-ZIRP and is still actively trimming software engineers from the work force (2024 and beyond).
LLMs only became a factor in hiring in the summer of 2025. But by then there was already a massive oversupply (relative to demand) of fresh CS graduates.
My personal opinion is that the market is not (yet) rough because of AI, it's actually mostly just rough because we're not in ZIRP anymore. AI is maybe making it worse on the margin, and is a convenient excuse, insofar as its easier to both scapegoat and reason about.
[1]: Software dev job postings on indeed in the US. Peaked in 2021, before falling off a cliff. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE
[2]: % of CS grads relative to all college enrollments; which peaked in class of 2026 (enrollment as of '22). https://www.reveliolabs.com/news/social/computer-science-has...
- dver
It's brutal, my son with a CS degree hasn't been able to get to single live interview ina year. A couple of screens has been it. I've reached out to my network, and the reply is always we're not hiring any juniors.
- Zigurd
The article assumes that jobs that can be automated are vulnerable. But in the postmortem of the AI driven layoffs so far, it's more that expectations about AI and productivity are driving the job cuts.
In other words shareholders and senior management are being shown the appearance of expectations about AI being met, whether or not it's working. Entry-level jobs are an obvious place to look things that can be cut to create an AI budget.
- armcat
It's interesting because a study here in Sweden [1] produces identical results. To quote from the study:
"An event study documents an accelerating decline in employment
of 22–25-year-olds in high-AI-exposure occupations, reaching 5.5 per cent by
early 2025 relative to less exposed occupations within the same employers"
[1] Same Storm, Different Boats: Generative AI and the Age Gradient in Hiring, Lodefalk et al, https://www.oru.se/globalassets/oru-sv/institutioner/hh/work...
- suriyaG
this is a super non-popular take on HN.
but the entry-level job market has always been tough.
with AI, outside the big tech world, it is hard to justify hiring entry level engineers as the time to train them ( 1 year+ ) to be productive enough is such a drag on the seniors, when the agents deliver things more care and more edge cases.
- fny
The implosion in junior quality exacerbates this.
The cohort that started during COVID were first knee-capped by remote classes and exams, and then they lobotomized themselves with ChatGPT.
- throwayay4929
1. The papers author's never claim causality.
2. There are other large macro forces at play, like firm consolidation, proliferation of NDAs, interest rates*, lack of growth (without Nvidia, the US economy would basically be in a recession?) and probably many more that are putting the job market into a low hire/low fire state.
Consider how we're actually not seeing much layoffs (some, but not much). So what were seeing in tech specifically is more like hiring freeze, so people with experience or in jobs aren't feeling much of the pressure, but new grads are hitting a wall.
Im posting this to resist the "ai is taking away people's jobs" narrative. It's definitely a factor but it's probably one of many and it's sloppy thinking to point fingers at ai and not other probably bigger factors.
* To their credit, the papers author's try to factor for zirp.
- d_burfoot
Partly this is because the big companies are diverting vast amounts of money towards building data centers, instead of hiring new grads. I expect young people who learn AI skills will be fine, once the data center spending binge is over.