Article By Frank Bergman
The long-feared artificial intelligence-driven jobs bloodbath may already be arriving for one particularly vulnerable group of American workers: those trying to get their foot in the door.
A disturbing new analysis of New York City employment data reveals that postings for entry-level jobs in computer and mathematical occupations have collapsed by a staggering 49% since 2022.
The findings raise fresh concerns that companies are increasingly turning to AI while dramatically reducing opportunities for young workers and recent graduates who previously relied on junior positions to launch their careers.
Entry-Level Tech Hiring ‘Fallen Off a Cliff’
The alarming figures come from a new report by the nonprofit Center for an Urban Future examining entry-level career opportunities in New York City’s technology sector.
Computer science graduates have been hit particularly hard.
Center for an Urban Future Executive Director Jon Bowles warned that the traditional pathway into lucrative technology careers is rapidly disappearing.
“Entry-level postings” have “fallen off a cliff, and the first rung of the ladder in tech is under pressure,” Bowles said.
“For many years, these were amazing opportunities for people getting a job because tech was growing so fast and adding so many entry-level jobs,” he continued.
“Those positions for young people with limited experience are harder to come by, and there is intense competition.”
The implications extend far beyond today’s unemployed graduates.
Entry-level jobs have traditionally allowed inexperienced workers to develop the skills necessary to eventually fill senior positions.
If companies increasingly replace those workers with AI, the technology could effectively remove the first step of the career ladder for an entire generation.
AI Threat Spreads Beyond Tech
Technology isn’t the only industry showing signs of a dramatic retreat from inexperienced workers.
Entry-level opportunities have also fallen sharply in office and administrative support, financial operations, arts and design, entertainment, sports and media, education, and library occupations.
The trend comes as increasingly sophisticated generative AI systems are capable of performing many of the routine tasks traditionally handed to junior employees.
That doesn’t establish AI as the sole cause of the collapse.
Technology companies have simultaneously been shedding workers as they reverse the hiring boom that accompanied the Covid pandemic.
Those cuts have collided with the explosive rise of generative AI, making it difficult to isolate precisely how much of the decline can be attributed directly to automation.
But the timing has intensified fears that businesses now have another powerful reason to avoid hiring inexperienced workers altogether.
U.S. Job Market Already Under Severe Pressure
The findings arrive amid wider signs of trouble across the American labor market.
Nearly one-quarter of the U.S. labor force was considered functionally unemployed as of July, according to recent data.
Against that backdrop, losing nearly half of entry-level technology postings since 2022 represents another major obstacle for younger Americans attempting to establish careers.
And tech may merely be where the effects become visible first.
The jobs most vulnerable to generative AI are often precisely the positions traditionally assigned to entry-level workers, in areas such as basic coding, research, administrative work, drafting, analysis, and other tasks used to train employees before they assume greater responsibility.
That creates a potentially profound problem.
Companies may be able to save money today by replacing junior employees with AI, but doing so also eliminates the pipeline that produces tomorrow’s experienced workers.
First Domino Has Already Fallen
Warnings that AI will suddenly wipe out millions of jobs across the economy have so far failed to materialize on the catastrophic scale repeatedly predicted.
The collapse in entry-level technology hiring, however, is real.
And AI isn’t operating in isolation.
Post-pandemic layoffs, economic weakness, corporate cost-cutting, and an increasingly difficult labor market are all contributing to the squeeze.
Simply eliminating AI tomorrow, therefore, wouldn’t necessarily restore the jobs that have disappeared.
Nevertheless, the 49% plunge provides an early glimpse of how the AI revolution could transform employment without producing an overnight “job apocalypse.”
Instead of instantly eliminating entire professions, AI may begin by quietly destroying the entry points that once allowed young Americans to enter them.
If that trend spreads, the first rung of the career ladder could disappear long before the rest of the ladder does.
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