AI Is Wrecking an Already Fragile Job Market for College Graduates

What do you hire a 22-year-old college graduate for these days? For a growing number of bosses, the answer is not much—AI can do the work instead.

- Lindsay Ellis & Katherine Bindley

At Chicago recruiting firm Hirewell, marketing agency clients have all but stopped requesting entry-level staff—young grads once in high demand but whose work is now a "home run" for AI, the firm's chief growth officer said. Dating app Grindr is hiring more seasoned engineers, forgoing some junior coders straight out of school, and CEO George Arison said companies are "going to need less and less people at the bottom."

Bill Balderaz, CEO of Columbus-based consulting firm Futurety, said he decided not to hire a summer intern this year, opting to run social-media copy through ChatGPT instead.

Balderaz has urged his own kids to focus on jobs that require people skills and can't easily be automated. One is becoming a police officer.

Having a good job "guaranteed" after college, he said, "I don't think that's an absolute truth today any more."

There's long been an unwritten covenant between companies and new graduates: Entry-level employees, young and hungry, are willing to work hard for lower pay. Employers, in turn, provide training and experience to give young professionals a foothold in the job market, seeding the workforce of tomorrow.

A yearslong white-collar hiring slump and recession worries have weakened that contract. Artificial intelligence now threatens to break it completely.

That is ominous for college graduates looking for starter jobs, but also potentially a fundamental realignment in how the workforce is structured. As companies hire and train fewer young people, they may also be shrinking the pool of workers that will be ready to take on more responsibility in five or 10 years. Companies say they are already rethinking how to develop the next generation of talent.

AI is accelerating trends that were already under way.