Generative AI is hollowing out entry-level jobs, study finds
117 comments
·September 16, 2025lukev
elevatortrim
I do not see anything in this study that accounts for the decline in economic activity. Is it AI replacing the jobs, or is it that companies are not optimistically hiring, which disproportionally impacts entry level jobs?
spacephysics
Agree, I think the high cost of full time hires for entry level software jobs (total comp + onboarding + mentoring) vs investing in AI and seeing if that gap can be filled is a far less risky choice at the current economic state.
6-12 months in, the AI bet doesnt pay off, then just stop spending money in it. cancel/dont renew contracts and move some teams around.
For full time entry hires, we typically dont see meaningful positive productivity (their cost is less than what they produce) for 6-8 months. Additionally, entry level takes time away from senior folks reducing their productivity. And if you need to cut payroll cost, its far more complicated, and worse for morale than just cutting AI spend.
So given the above, plus economy seemingly pre-recession (or have been according to some leading indicators) seems best to wait or hire very cautiously for next 6-8 months at least.
JustExAWS
Even then why hire a junior dev instead of a mid level developer that doesn’t need mentoring? You can probably hire one for the same price as a junior dev if you hire remotely even in the US.
pydry
Exactly this. 2023Q1 was when the interest rate hike from the previous year really kicked in with full force. It was the first hiring market I ever saw in well over a decade where the employers were firmly in the drivers seat even for seniors.
I can imagine that there were a decent number of execs who tried chatgpt, made some outlandish predictions and based some hiring decisions upon those predictions though.
jparishy
to me it is just market pressure to exploit the high stress on laborers atm. the level of uncertainty today is only a problem if you don't have a ton of existing capital, which everyone in charge does. so they are insulated and can treat people poorly without repercussions. in a market that prefers short term profits, they will then do this in order to make more money right now.
companies must do this, 'cause if they don't then their competition will (i.e. the pressure)
of course, we can collectively decide to equally value labor and profit, as a symbiotic relationship that incentivizes long term prosperity. but where's the memes in that
roxolotl
This is the big question. It could be any combination of the following and it likely depends on the company/position too:
- Generative AI is genuinely capable enough to replace entry level workers at a lower cost.
- The hype around Generative AI is convincing people who make hiring decisions that it is capable enough to replace entry level workers at a lower cost.
- The hype around Generative AI is being used as an excuse to not hire during an economic downturn.
Could even still be other things too.
mind-blight
One issue we're running into at my job: we're struggling to find entry-level candidates whoaren't lying about what they know by using an LLM.
For the tech side, we've reduced behavioral questions and created an interview that allows people to use cursor, LLMs, etc. in the interview - that way, it's impossible to cheat.
We have folks build a feature on a fake code base. Unfortunately, more junior folks now seem to struggle a lot more with this problem
0_____0
This was close to my first thought as well. I don't think we're far enough along the LLM adoption curve to actually know how it will affect the business case and thus employment long term. In the last couple of years of LLM/AI honeymoon, the changes to accommodate the technology may obscure direct and second order effects.
clusterhacks
I am confused about how to feel about the data the paper is based on. If you look at the paper, the data description is:
"Our primary data source is a detailed LinkedIn-based resume dataset provided by Revelio Labs ...
We complement the worker resume data with Revelio’s database of job postings, which tracks recruitment activity by the firms since 2021 ...
The final sample consists of 284,974 U.S. firms that were successfully matched to both employee position data and job postings and that were actively hiring between January 2021 and March 2025.3 For these firms, we observe 156,765,776 positions dating back to 2015 and 245,838,118 job postings since 2021, of which 198,773,384 successfully matched with their raw text description."
They identified 245 million job postings from 2021 forward in the United States? I mean the U.S. population is like 236 million for the 18-65 age group (based on wikipedia, 64.9% of 342 total population).
And they find a very small percentage of firms using generative AI:
"Our approach allows us to capture firms that have actively begun integrating generative AI into their operations. By this measure, 10,599 firms, about 3.7 percent of our sample, adopted generative AI during the study period."
Maybe I am wildly underestimating just how much LinkedIn is used worldwide for recruiting? As a tech person, I'm also very used to seeing the same job listing re-listed by what seems to be a large number of low-effort "recruiting" firms on LinkedIn.
I think for trying to figure out how generative AI is affecting entry-level jobs, I would have been much more interested in some case studies. Something like find three to five companies (larger than startups? 100+ employees? 500+?) that have decided to hire fewer entry-level employees by adding generative AI into their work as a matter of policy. Then maybe circling back from the case studies to this larger LinkedIn dataset and tied the case study information into the LinkedIn data somehow.
smokedetector1
Interesting. However just because this is true right now doesn't mean it will be true going forward. Unique to the current moment is that there are simultaneously (1) high interest rates and a challenging economy (2) a narrative that AI adoption should enable cutting junior roles. This could lead to companies that would anyway be doing layoffs choosing to lay off or not hire juniors, and replace with AI adoption.
To really test the implied theory that using AI enables cutting junior hiring, we need to see it in a better economy, in otherwise growing companies, or with some kind of control (though not sure how this would really be possible).
greyb
>Unique to the current moment is that there are simultaneously (1) high interest rates and a challenging economy (2) a narrative that AI adoption should enable cutting junior roles.
I'm not disputing your point, but I'm curious: given that the main headline measures that we tend to see about the US economy right now involve the labour market. How do you establish the counterfactual?
petcat
We had some marketing folks give us a company-wide demo of Chat GPT and some other Gen AI tools and showed us how cool it is and how quick they can make stylish and sophisticated pitch decks and marketing materials now.
And the entire time I'm watching this I'm just thinking that they don't realize that they are only demonstrating the tools that are going to replace their own jobs. Kinda sad, really. Demand for soft skills and creatives is going to continue to decline.
Dev jobs too.
johnrob
LLMs are good at creating single use documents, like a pitch deck used for one prospective customer (never to be used again). But for long lived documents, on which future work builds atop, the bar is higher and the value of LLMs is more grey.
m_mueller
My startup is actually working on precisely that problem: https://octigen.com ;
AlexandrB
And then the customers use gen AI to summarize the same pitch decks/marketing materials so they don't have to look at them. Let's cut out the middle man and just send the prompt instead.
mingus88
I have the opposite expectation actually
In the late 90s you weee considered a prodigy if you understood how to use a search engine. I had so many opportunities simply because I could find and retain information.
So LLMs have solved this. Knowing a framework or being able to create apps is not a marketable skill any longer. What are we supposed to do now?
It’s the soft skills that matter now. Being well liked has always been more important in a job than being the best at it. We all know that engineer who knows they are hot shit but everyone avoids because they are insufferable.
Those marketing people don’t need to spend a week on their deck any longer. They can work the customer relationship now.
Knowing how to iterate with an LLM to give the customer exactly what they need is the valuable skill now.
bobafett-9902
but i guess to me the question is: if you're management, do you expect your workers to do more/work faster (like a TAS in a way)? or do you expect to replace your workers entirely?
I personally think we're still a ways from the latter...
octo888
Experienced that too. They're basically forced to give those demos
PolicyPhantom
Generative AI may automate some entry-level tasks, but young professionals are not just “replaceable labor.” They bring growth potential, adaptation, and social learning. Without frameworks to manage AI’s role, we risk undermining the very training grounds that prepare the next generation of experts.
jexe
That's a lot to invest in someone at a large comparative loss, in a world where employees don't last more than a couple years before job hopping.
PolicyPhantom
I agree that high turnover is a real constraint. That’s why the answer isn’t “10 years of apprenticeship” but designing scaffolds that combine learning with contribution in a shorter timeframe. Things like short rotations, micro-credentials, or mentorship stipends let juniors add value while they’re still on the job. Even if they leave after a few years, the investment isn’t wasted — both sides still capture meaningful returns.
JustExAWS
How do they bring more “growth potential” than a mid level developer with 35 years of experience? The average tenure of a developer is 2-3 years. I expect that to increase going forward slightly as the job market continues to suck. But why would I care about the growth of the company when my promotion criteria is based on delivering quarterly or yearly goals? Those goals can much more easily be met by paying slightly more for a mid level developer who doesn’t do negative work both directly and by taking time away from the existing team?
PolicyPhantom
You’re absolutely right that mid-level hires buy immediate productivity. But “growth potential” isn’t just romanticism — it’s an investable trajectory. With the right project design, feedback loops, and domain exposure, juniors can grow into “multipliers” — people who combine technical skills with adaptability or domain expertise. That’s a kind of return you rarely get from simply adding another mid-level hire. In practice, resilient organizations balance both: mid-levels for immediate throughput, and juniors for long-term strength.
skiffer
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wnc3141
I heard an argument that the valuation of AI/ AI-adjacent firms only makes sense if 1) companies grow their aggregate top-line revenues by multiple trillion dollars of 2) this amounts to the potential savings from gutting knowledge-based employment across an economy.
Of course in the long run a chronically underemployed economy will have little demand for products and services, but that is beyond the scope of companies who, in general, are focused on winning short term and zero-sum market capture. However I believe that while a billion dollar valuation is a market and strategy problem, a trillion dollar valuation is a political problem - and I would hope that a mandate of broad gainful employment translates to political action - although this remains to be seen.
zeuch
New Harvard's study (62M workers, 285k firms) shows firms adopting generative AI cut junior hiring sharply while continuing to grow senior roles — eroding the bottom rungs of career ladders and reshaping how careers start.
rd
What was the incentive for companies to train juniors into seniors in the past, post job-hopping era? Curious to know if that incentive has warped in the past two decades or so as someone who's starting their career now.
zapnuk
Same as always?
Cheap labor. It doesn't take that much to train someone to be somewhat useful, in mmany cases. The main educators are universities and trade schools. Not companies.
And if they want more loyalty the can always provide more incentives for juniors to stay longer.
At least in my bubble it's astonishing how it's almost never worth it to stay at a company. You'd likely get overlooked for promotions and salary rises are almost insultingly low.
bix6
There is no incentive now because the social contract is broken and there is too much mobility. Best you can do is find a supportive boss / a company that provides training opportunities.
FrustratedMonky
In 10 years where do the senior dev's come from? Real question. Seems like with lower entry level jobs now, in 10 years there won't be seniors to hire.
gruez
Even if we grant this is going to be a problem, it makes no sense for any individual company to do anything about it. Why take on the cost of training a junior when they can bail in a few years? This is especially true if you're not a big tech company, which puts you at risk of having your junior-turned-senior employees poached by big tech.
zxor
Give your juniors reasons to stay at your company? It's not hard if the company cares at all.
pdntspa
There will still be plenty of seniors, they will be in the 40s and 50s. The problem you speak of is much further out, once those seniors retire.
throwawayoldie
In 10 years, the management (or "leadership" if you like the taste of boot) responsible for doing the cutting will have moved on to something else, with no consequences for them.
softwaredoug
Junior devs eventually will have been brought up with agentic coding, etc. Hopefully whatever the "new way" becomes is how they'll be taught.
Currently part of the problem is the taboo using AI coding in undergrad CS programs. And I don't know the answer. But someone will find the right way to teach new/better ways of working with and without generative AI. It may just become second nature to everyone.
pdntspa
My guess is that at some the code itself, in a language humans easily comprehend, will become superficial as we delegate more and more of the logic to AI development. Perhaps in the near future AIs will be writing things at a much lower level by default and the entire act of programming as we know it goes away.
Kind of like that meme or how two AIs talking to each other spontaneously develop their own coding for communication. The human trappings become extra baggage.
lock1
As an occasional uni TA, I'm leaning toward banning LLM for easy coursework while allowing it on more difficult & open-ended ones.
Pretty sure it's a self-destructive move for a CS or software engineering student to pass foundational courses like discrete math, intro to programming, algorithm & data structure using LLM. You can't learn how to write if all you do is read. LLM will 1-shot the homework, and the student just passively reads the code.
On more difficult and open coursework, LLM seems to work pretty well at assisting students. For example, in the OS course I teach, I usually give students a semester-long project on writing from scratch x86 32-bit kernel with simple preemptive multitasking. LLM definitely makes difficult things much more approachable; students can ask LLM for "dumb basic questions" without fear of judgement.
But due to the novelty & open-ended nature of the requirement ("toy" file system, no DMA, etc), playing a slot machine on LLM just won't cut it. Students need to actually understand what they're trying to achieve, and at that point they can just write the code themselves.
thw_9a83c
While agentic coding can make you productive, it won't teach you to deeply understand the source code, algorithms, or APIs produced by AI. If you can't thoroughly audit any source code created by an AI agent, then you are definitely not a senior developer.
psunavy03
This is the same reason they force you to do the math by hand in undergrad and implement functions that are already in the standard libraries of most languages. Because you don't know anything yet, and you need to learn why the more automated stuff works the way it does.
seanmcdirmid
Agentic coding is like leading and instructing a team of a bunch of very dumb but also very smart junior devs. They can follow instructions to the T and have great memory but lack common sense and have no experience. The more experienced and skilled their leadership, the better chance of getting a good result from them, which I don’t think is a good job (yet?) for an entry level human SWE.
Ragnarork
> Junior devs eventually will have been brought up with agentic coding
But if they're not hired...?
Workaccount2
Kids are always the best with technology. The generation in high school right now will be god tier at getting results from LLMs.
rs999gti
> In 10 years where do the senior dev's come from?
From company interns. Internships won't go away, there will just be less of them. For example, some companies will turn down interns because they do not have the time to train them due to project load.
With AI, now employed developers can be picky on whether or not to take on interns.
candiddevmike
I think a large chunk of people are naively assuming exponential growth and no longer needing senior devs in 10 years.
neutronicus
From the bread line, after they've all been displaced by AI, if you happen to need one for God knows what reason, the CEOs are hoping
thw_9a83c
I suppose the idea is that those junior developers who weren't hired will spend 10 years doing intensive, unpaid self-study so that they can knock on the door as experienced seniors by that time.
planccck
Are you serious? How on earth are these people going to eat or pay rent for 10 years? As well, most companies would laugh you out the door if you were applying a senior role without any experience working in the role.
thw_9a83c
In the future, there will be two kinds of companies:
1. Those that encourage people to use AI agents aggressively to increase productivity.
2. Those that encourage people to use AI agents aggressively to be more productive while still hiring young people.
neutronicus
The ones in group 2 that also aggressively prune expensive, complacent seniors might even win in the short run!
Young people are cheap and they love AI!
JustExAWS
How much cheaper are younger developers overall? If you look at the delta between junior and mid level developers in most industries - ie enterprise dev not BigTech or adjacent - it’s really not that much
alchemical_piss
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koakuma-chan
I don't understand how you want innovation and productivity in a world with rapidly increasing population. We need less and less people while producing more and more people. Where am I wrong?
gampleman
Depends what kind of people you need. For innovation you generally need exceptional people, and the probability of finding such a person is proportional to the total number of people available.
triceratops
> in a world with rapidly increasing population
That world was 30 years ago. In 2025 world average total fertility rate is 2.2, which is a shade above replacement rate (2.1). And 2.2 is a 10% drop since 2017 alone (when it was 2.46).
Because life expectancy is higher, the population will continue to increase. But not "rapidly".
gampleman
According to some cutting edge research[1], we are already bellow replacement rate worldwide.
zdragnar
Recently there was a splash in the news about the US death rate projected to exceed the birth rate by 2031.
Many of the largest countries are experiencing similar declines, with fewer and fewer countries maintaining large birth rates.
thw_9a83c
I don't see developed countries to have a "rapidly increasing population" problem.
carlosjobim
Practically the whole planet is experiencing population decline now. The poster you're replying to is basing his argument on an obsolete worldview.
MDGeist
Kinda feels like a lot of companies think they can be option 1 because someone else will be option 2, and then they'll hire the young people away after they become experienced.
dayvid
Any job that doesn't creatively generate revenue will be systematized and automated as soon as possible. AI agents are just an acceleration factor for this
candiddevmike
Source?
esafak
The tragedy of the commons: companies acting in their self interest at the expense of the industry by drying up the workforce pipeline. The next generation will pay, like when America stopped producing hardware.
This is cause for government intervention.
carlosjobim
It has been like this for decades by now, and your precious government loves this because they also consist of old people who hate the younger generations. Any and every time the government intervenes it is to stomp down on the youth and nothing else.
ileonichwiesz
It should be, but the government loves AI - incidentally it’s also the one thing currently propping up the economy.
shredprez
The pessimistic reading is well-represented, so here's another: AI changes the definition of "entry-level", but it doesn't eliminate the class of professional labor that experienced workers would rather not do.
Until AI can do literally everything we can, that class of work will continue to exist, and it'll continue to be handed to the least experienced workers as a way for them to learn, get oriented, and earn access to more interesting problems and/or higher pay while experienced folks rest on their laurels or push the state of the art.
pluc
The new career path for devs has them start with prompt engineering. I can't wait for the chickens to come home to roost.
axpy906
It’s really hard to adjust for economic factors here. I am in agreement with skepticism in this thread as job numbers got revised downward heavily in both 2024 and 2025 (too negatives in some months) indicating a poor economic situation.
It's pretty clear this is happening.
The question is... is this based on existing capability of LLMs to do these jobs? Or are companies doing this on the expectation that AI is advanced enough to pick up the slack?
I have observed a disconnect in which management is typically far more optimistic about AI being capable of performing a specific task than are the workers who currently perform that task.
And to what extent is AI-related job cutting just an excuse for what management would want to do anyway?