The Death of Entry-Level Jobs? AI And The New Corporate Ladder

Recent graduates, with eyes full of hope and ambition, will come to the realisation quite quickly that you need experience to get an entry-level job. It sounds like a joke but, unfortunately, it isn’t. Just a quick scroll through LinkedIn will show job postings dressed up as “entry-level” but asking for two to three years of experience in the requirements. To make it worse, the graduate scheme intake pile is smaller than it’s been in years.

Anyone who’s left uni in the last couple of years will have a similar version of the same story. Applied to hundreds of jobs, received a bunch of “unfortunately this time” replies and the odd interview that one would really rather forget about entirely. And the parents who bagged their first jobs off the back of a somewhat decent CV and a firm handshake haven’t quite figured out how it’s gotten to that point.

Well, it’s a bit tricky to “get your foot in the door” when there is no door. Most people are pointing the finger squarely at AI for that.

The Vanishing First Rung Of The Corporate Ladder

Let’s begin with the numbers because to be honest, they’re rather alarming. In the UK, graduate vacancies on Adunza fell from 15,397 in July 2025 to 8,383 in July this year. That’s a decrease of roughly 45% in one year. Tech grad roles have taken the hit particularly hard, with the Institute of Student Employers recording a 46% drop in jobs from 2024 according to The London Economic.

Looking across the Atlantic, the picture is also a fairly bleak one. Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab reported a 67% drop in US entry-level tech postings between 2023 and 2024. Recent graduate unemployment hit 5.7% in the States, which is a complete near-reversal of the pattern where degree holders fared better than the broader workforce.

And the companies actively rolling out generative AI? Well, their entry-level is dropping by as much as 80% per quarter. Not year, per quarter.

What Is AI “Eating” Then?

Quite simply, the bottom of the ladder. AI is becoming exceptionally good at doing the things that used to be a junior’s job. You know, drafting the deck, tidying up the spreadsheet everyone refuses to look at, summarising reports and so on.

All of those small tasks that nobody wanted to be bothered with were the tasks that gave a graduate their first two paid years of learning. Now, it’s being taken over by tools that don’t need coffee breaks. How can a graduate compete?

Brookings Institution research went and put a number on it. AI could automate more than 50% of tasks in entry-level positions, which is about five times the risk faced by more senior roles.

So really, that “paid learning curve” where companies basically subsidised your early education by paying you to do the grunt work is disappearing altogether.

The Particular Problem Happening In The UK

Between the start of this year and July, overall UK job postings fell by 11%. Meanwhile, the knowledge of AI tools and AI-related skills appeared in 9.4% of UK job ads. This is telling you that employers want more from fewer people and they want them AI-fluent from day one.

Now if you add the rising employer National Insurance contributions and general economic wariness that seems to be felt by most to all of that, hiring managers are bluntly asking the question: why train a junior when a chatbot can churn out a decent draft for £20 a month? It’s a fair question to ask on their part.

The knock-on effect isn’t pretty given that more than a million young people are now classed as NEET – not in education, employment or training. Alan Milburn, who is leading an independent review into youth unemployment, is warning that entry-level opportunities have been hollowed out. Yep, there’s even a decline in the humble Saturday job which is the training ground before the training ground.

The Ladder Is Still There, It Just Looks Different

It’s not to say that “AI is going to eat your future” because quite frankly, that doesn’t paint the full picture of what’s going on. What’s happening now is something researchers are calling “seniorisation” which is where junior job postings are being loaded with senior-level asks, specifically around judgement and AI orchestration.

While the old ladder rewarded endurance meaning, put in your time doing the boring bits, learn by osmosis and wait your turn, the new one wants new hires to hit the ground running with tools that lets one person do the work of three.

Some call it a “superagency” where juniors are now using AI to punch above their weight when it comes to experience. If a first-year hire has the right prompting habits, they could actually produce work in a much shorter time than it would have taken a mid-level employee a couple of years ago. AI isn’t removing the need for judgement, it’s giving professionals just starting out in their careers a way to do meaningful work sooner.

What Does The New Corporate Ladder Look Like?

Well for a start, it has more rungs at the top than the bottom. You don’t spend the first two years note-taking and prepping reports. It’s part AI-fluency bootcamp and part real work. LinkedIn’s 2026 Jobs on the Rise report even puts AI engineers and AI consultants as some of the fastest-growing roles in the US. A couple of years ago, those jobs didn’t even exist.

For graduates, the uncomfortable bit is that a CV alone isn’t enough. It’s portfolios, side projects and proof of AI skills that will really get you somewhere. For employers, the uncomfortable truth is that trying to remove the bottom rung to save costs may cause a talent crisis in the next decade. If nobody is training the juniors, who’s going to replace the seniors in 2036?

So, can we really say that entry-level jobs are in the grave? It’s a bit dramatic. But the death of entry-level jobs as we’ve known it is a bit more accurate.