AI's Impact on Entry-Level Jobs: Challenges and Opportunities for Gen Z

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says AI can rival someone with a PhD -- just weeks after saying it's ready for entry-level jobs. So what's left for grads?

Billionaire OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warns that AI is rivaling the capabilities of entry-level talent, from interns to PhDs. As Gen Z faces rising unemployment and shrinking job opportunities, experts reveal the jobs that will survive -- and how to land one. Earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that the technology can already perform the tasks equal to that of an entry-level employee. Now, in a podcast posted just last week, the ChatGPT mastermind went even further -- saying AI can even perform tasks typically expected of the smartest grads with a doctorate. "In some sense AIs are like a top competitive programmer in the world now or AIs can get a top score on the world's hardest math competitions or AIs can do problems that I'd expect an expert PhD in my field to do," he told the Uncapped podcast (hosted by Sam's brother, Jack Altman). As companies like Amazon have admitted they will soon cut their corporate ranks thanks to AI and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warning that the technology could wipe out half of all entry-level, white collar jobs -- it begs the question: what jobs will be left for those tossing their graduation caps into the air in the coming years? Already, this graduation season has brought one of the toughest job markets for new graduates. The unemployment rate among bachelor's degree graduates rose to 6.1% in May, up from just 4.4% the month prior, according to most recent data published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED). Additional federal data analyzing outcomes by college majors shows that fields linked to AI exposure, including commercial art & graphic design, fine arts, and computer engineering, all have higher unemployment rates -- each above 7%. However, in the tech industry in particular, volatility in the jobs market is nothing new, said Art Zeile, CEO of tech career platform Dice. After all, nearly 600,000 tech employees lost their jobs between 2022 and 2024, according to Layoffs.fyi. "There is no question that it is a challenging time to be a new graduate entering the job market. We've seen some reductions in hiring, especially for entry-level roles, as companies reassess their headcount and look for more specialized skills," Zeile told Fortune. "But I wouldn't hit the panic button quite yet." Rather, today's competitive environment is an opportunity for young people to further sharpen their skills and enter the workforce with a larger focus, Zeile added. It's a message further echoed by Tiffany Hsieh, director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work at Jobs for the Future. "Young people looking for technology or graphic design roles should be thinking about how they upskill, reskill, or pivot, but others in less impacted ones like elementary school teachers and civil engineers need to worry less," she told Fortune. Even Altman remains optimistic that AI won't completely terrorize the future of work because, he says, it'll also open up new opportunities. "A lot of jobs will go away. A lot of jobs will just change dramatically, but we have always been really good at figuring out new things to do and status games or ways to be useful to each other," Altman told his brother. "I'm not a believer that that ever runs out." The 40-year-old billionaire cited the podcast industry as a space that has grown exponentially in the last decade, and the jobs of the future will simply be ones that sound "sillier and sillier" from our current perspective. Ziele predicts that in the coming years, more jobs will be centered around AI experience designing; data storytelling, and AI governance, security, and ethical implementation. Those skilled in the development of agentic AI will also be at an advantage. "Professionals who master agentic AI, which is still in its nascent stages, may become invaluable to companies that want to automate significant chunks of their workflows," he said. Some jobs of the future may look like "Frankenstein roles" -- like a story designer or human resources designer -- that lean on durable skills and pull together various human-centered tasks, according to Hsieh. While the future remains uncertain, there are still many roles in fields like the skilled trades or healthcare that are growing and are relatively stable from AI, Hsieh added. "It's okay to explore different roles in industries you may not have planned on - you will still learn and build skills in any role," she encouraged Gen Z. "We are all going to need to be more comfortable with career switching and adopt a lifelong learning mindset." Landing a job today may feel like an uphill battle, but entry-level roles haven't disappeared entirely -- there are just new strategies required to secure them. But because AI has made it easier than ever to curate resumes and cover letters, that's not enough to stand out from the crowd. Hsieh encouraged graduates to focus on their network and portfolio. "Demonstrated experience is a valuable currency in a world where entry-level roles are scarcer and therefore more competitive," she said. "Building MVP tools and solutions with AI for a target industry or to solve a challenge in your community could be a creative way to demonstrate initiative, domain expertise, and durable skills like critical thinking." In a sense, the job search should be treated like a personal marketing campaign, Zeile suggested. "Hiring managers are often looking for potential over experience, so it's essential to articulate your passion and willingness to learn new skills during the interview process," he added. "Continuous learning and upskilling, particularly in areas like AI, data analysis, or cloud technologies, can also help to set early-career professionals apart from their competition."

Gen Z's job ladder isn't breaking because of AI -- but it's evolving, says top LinkedIn exec

With generative AI rewiring how work gets done, the future of entry-level employment hangs in the balance. But Dan Shapero, chief operating officer at LinkedIn, isn't ready to declare the bottom rung of the career ladder broken -- at least not yet. "Navigating the transition to an AI economy is probably going to be the issue of the next decade," Shapero told Fortune in a recent conversation at Cannes Lions. "Not just for companies, but for individuals." Shapero acknowledges that there are already anecdotal signs that finding that all-important first job out of college is becoming tougher, as noted by his colleague and LinkedIn's chief economic opportunity officer, Aneesh Raman, in a recent op-ed for the New York Times. But unlike previous waves of technology that tended to target specific functions or industries, AI is "a very pervasive shift in how the world of work is happening," he said. Rather than eliminating jobs wholesale, Shapero sees the nature of entry-level work evolving. "I remember when I was at Bain, a lot of the time I spent was making slides and going to the library to figure out research reports. All of that is now automated," he said. "Bain still hires scores of recent graduates. They just do different parts of the process. "If you talk to the partners and ask them what they did when they first joined, they were cutting out squares with a scalpel to make slides on a piece of colored paper because PowerPoint didn't exist then." One of the most significant changes Shapero anticipates in the job market over the next five years is the rise of AI fluency as a core hiring attribute. "If you talk to companies trying to deploy AI, they'll talk about how varied the adoption is," he said. "You'll have some people using it all day long and others that are slowing down the process because they're concerned about what it might mean for them." Job candidates, he predicts, will increasingly be asked to prove they're comfortable with AI -- not just as users, but as agents of change. "There's going to be a lot of pressure to build AI into your operating model, and the bottleneck is unlikely to be the tech," Shapero said. "The bottleneck is going to be how you teach people how to do it. That's a talent challenge, not a tech challenge." Internally, LinkedIn talks about hiring for "AI fluency and agency" -- the former being the ability to use the tools, and the latter being the initiative to find new solutions rather than relying strictly on prescribed processes. LinkedIn itself is leaning into AI to transform the machinery of recruitment. Shapero described a vision of recruiting where AI handles the repetitive work -- generating job specs, matching candidate skills, screening for eligibility -- and recruiters focus on the human elements: persuasion, relationship-building, and judgment. "If you map out what a recruiter does, half the week is automatable tasks that are also the things they like the least," he said. "The other half is time with candidates. We hear from recruiters: automate what can be automated, and let me focus on the human part." LinkedIn's new "Hiring Assistant," rolled out to recruiters and early corporate customers last fall, automates much of that front-end process. "They're seeing candidates they wouldn't have seen otherwise," Shapero noted, pointing out that AI can broaden rather than narrow talent pools. "Every recruiter has habitual search criteria. They exclude a whole bunch of candidates who might actually be a great fit." In other words, AI may be more inclusive than the humans it augments. Still, none of this automation spells the end of human judgment. If anything, it makes it more valuable. "The right endpoint will be more tech and more human," Shapero said. "But we're still a long way from that place." Even as AI rewires hiring and flattens the traditional career path, Shapero remains optimistic that people will adapt -- if they're willing to keep learning. "You don't necessarily need to be the one that invents the new way to do something," he said. "But you do need to be aware of what others are doing, what the best practices are, and then be comfortable changing your habits."

Reid Hoffman says consoling Gen Z in the AI bloodbath is like putting a 'Band-Aid on a bullet wound' -- he shares 4 skills college grads need to survive

For Gen Z college graduates this year, walking across the stage comes with more than just a diploma -- it's bringing a sense of dread about the future. AI is completely disrupting the college-to-career pipeline, so much so that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is predicting half of all entry-level, white-collar jobs could disappear -- and federal data backs up a decline in the recent college graduate job market. The problem is so existential that it's leaving the most inspirational minds at a loss; as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman put it recently, "even the most inspirational advice lands like a Band-Aid on a bullet wound." However, despite a predicted AI white-collar "bloodbath," not all is lost, and young people in particular have one advantage over their senior leaders: they know a thing or two about adapting to technology. After all, one in three college students already admit to using ChatGPT. "I urge you not to think in terms of AI-proofing your career," Hoffman encouraged Gen Z graduates in an op-ed for The San Francisco Standard. "Instead, AI-optimize it. Take advantage. AI is a tool you can master." Finding success in an AI-future will require more than just learning to prompt engineer or vibe code. It means understanding how technology is revolutionizing workflows and business models: "The more you understand what employers are hiring for, and the reasons why, the more you'll understand how you can get ahead in this new world," Hoffman wrote. Fortune reached out to Hoffman for comment. With AI models improving by the day, it's becoming more important than ever to identify which skills will matter most in the future. Four skills in particular will soon be the most valuable to master, Hoffman said -- ones that AI cannot replicate: "People with the capacity to form intentions and set goals will emerge as winners in an AI-mediated world," he said, while adding that those who take advantage of AI will come out on top. "While evidence suggests it's getting harder to find a first job, it has never been easier to create a first opportunity," he added. "Since billions of people have access to the same tools and platforms and information you do, the competition will be intense. But it always has been for the best jobs." And while recent grads may feel like climbing the career ladder is impossible without entry-level experience, Hoffman encouraged Gen Z to get entrepreneurial and use AI as a tool to create their own opportunities. "Try lots of things," he concluded. "Instead of making five-year plans, consider six-month experiments. With the right tools, you can now do what used to require teams: create content and brands, generate and test marketing campaigns, write code, and design products." While it may be tempting to view AI chatbots as newfound friends, Hoffman warned against ignoring the power of in-person networks in an AI future. In fact, he called building friendship in business one of "humanity's greatest superpowers." "Friendship is one of humanity's oldest technologies. Long before we had corporations, capital markets, or even written language, we had alliances rooted in trust," Hoffman wrote on X. As the co-founder of LinkedIn, the platform that has arguably brought networking into the 21st century, it may come as no surprise that Hoffman believes reconnecting with humans is what will keep you grounded. But it's especially true, he said, in an era of abundant efficiency and diminishing empathy. "These human networks of trust don't scale like AI, which means your network is more valuable than ever."

Employers want to hire Gen Z workers who have knowledge of AI: 'You...

The most valuable skill an employee can have in the digital age is... the ability to ask AI? Titans of the tech industry have taken to social media and other public speaking engagements to reassure Gen-Z, the newest members of the workforce, that AI won't be detrimental to job availability -- in fact, it might be able to aid in their employment. "AI is changing everything, faster than most institutions, companies or curriculums can keep pace with. But no, that doesn't mean your education or potential is obsolete. It means we have to think differently about what growth and opportunity look like," wrote LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman in a recent post on the platform. "You were born into this shift. You're native to these tools in a way that older generations aren't. Lean into it. Teach others." "You don't have to become an engineer to use AI powerfully," Hoffman advised. "Think about how to apply it creatively, how to solve real problems with it, how to collaborate with it. One of your first reactions to any challenge should be 'How can I use AI to help me here?'" Hoffman isn't the only one at his level who is optimistic about AI's influence on the workforce -- other high-level tech execs offered similar thoughts about the future landscape of the job market. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy shared that the implementation of generative AI will likely "reduce" the company's corporate workforce. AI "should change the way our work is done," wrote Jassy in a memo distributed to employees and posted publicly. "Those who embrace this change, become conversant in AI, help us build and improve our AI capabilities internally and deliver for customers, will be well-positioned to have high impact and help us reinvent the company," he added. Overall, the message coming from industry leaders is that being adaptive and willing to incorporate AI into current professional practices is the real key to being well-positioned for the future job market -- but this idea is being obscured under encouraging niceties that are fed to Gen-Z. "Whilst they may be at an advantage with their AI skills more so than previous generations, they will still need the practical, world-wise experience to flush out any AI inconsistencies and errors that older workers will possess," Keith Arundale, a visiting fellow at the UK's Henley Business School, told Newsweek. "Comfort without mastery can backfire. Gen Z's early exposure is an advantage, but it isn't a golden ticket," agreed Fabian Stephany, assistant professor for AI and Work at the University of Oxford, in an interview with Newsweek. Despite the positive packaging that this potential employment crisis tends to be wrapped up in, some top tech figures remain skeptical. Automation and increased usage of AI by large companies is "going to happen in a small amount of time -- as little as a couple of years or less," Dario Amodei, CEO of AI company Anthropic, told Axios. "We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming. I don't think this is on people's radar," Amodei continued. In reality, Gen-Z isn't necessarily better equipped to handle the demands of modern-day jobs just because of a generational familiarity with AI. They still need soft skills and the social abilities to properly navigate dilemmas that professional environments often pose -- employers and industry leaders just tend to leave that part out.

Entry level jobs are disappearing -- Gen Z should learn these skills...

Experts are warning that entry-level jobs may be disappearing -- leaving Gen Z unemployed. This generation of young workers, expected to make up about 30% of the global workforce by 2030, is entering the job market as the roles they were set to apply for might not exist. As AI continues to evolve, it's clear that many of the traditional entry-level roles, often seen as stepping stones into the workforce, are rapidly being automated. A YouGov survey found that 54% of Americans say they feel cautious about advances in AI and 47% feel concerned. The shift towards AI is impacting the types of jobs available, especially those for new employees. "Entry-level jobs tend to involve routine, well-defined tasks -- exactly the kind of work current AI systems are best suited to automate," Professor Daniela Rus, the Director of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, told Newsweek. Experts argue that while some of these roles might not disappear entirely, they are evolving into something unrecognizable. For Gen Z, this transition could wipe out or change the roles they expected to apply for. "AI is rapidly reshaping entry-level jobs, automating repetitive tasks, streamlining workflows, and, in some cases, eliminating roles entirely," Keri Mesropov, founder of Spring Talent Development, said. However, Gen Z's chances of being employed aren't completely deleted. Those looking to enter the workforce may just need to adapt to utilize this new technology. But this is nothing entirely new. The workforce as gone through changes due to technological leaps throughout history -- the industrial revolution and the dot-com era. Industry analyst Josh Bersin argues that entry-level hiring has currently slowed due to economic factors, but that the introduction of AI could also create entirely new job categories. These roles would involve building, managing, and optimizing AI systems, presenting an opportunity for digital natives to step into new roles. This shift isn't just about surviving in the job market -- it's about adapting to a new professional environment where AI becomes a powerful tool in everyday work. "AI is changing everything, faster than most institutions, companies or curriculums can keep pace with. But no, that doesn't mean your education or potential is obsolete. It means we have to think differently about what growth and opportunity look like," wrote LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman in a recent post on the platform. "You were born into this shift. You're native to these tools in a way that older generations aren't. Lean into it. Teach others." Despite fears that AI will replace human workers, experts agree that AI cannot fully replace human judgment. Mesropov argues that while AI can automate tasks, it still requires human input for context-heavy decisions, judgment calls, and troubleshooting. And Gen Z's familiarity with technology, particularly AI, could make them valuable assets in this new era. According to the YouGov survey, adults under 30 are more likely than older Americans to ever use AI tools (76% vs. 51%) and are also more likely to use AI at least weekly (50% vs. 23%). "The advantage Gen Z has is that they are digital natives. They are well-positioned to work alongside AI, not in opposition to it," Rus told Newsweek. "Young people today are using AI to solve problems and even have fun by creating stories and images." As AI reshapes the job market, the skills companies will need most in their entry-level hires won't just be technical -- they will need strong problem-solving abilities, creativity, and emotional intelligence. Experts suggest that while the structure of entry-level jobs is changing, the challenge will be to rethink what these roles look like. AI-assisted apprenticeships, project-based learning environments, and hybrid human-AI teams are among the potential models for the future. However, experts also caution that while young workers have an advantage in terms of digital fluency, they must still build the soft skills necessary to succeed in the workforce, such as communication, adaptability, and critical thinking. Though it's easy to get lost in the rhetoric surrounding AI's potential to disrupt jobs, the reality is that the technology is not just a threat -- it's an opportunity. For Gen Z, the key to thriving in this new era will be their ability to adapt, learn, and leverage AI tools to solve real-world problems.