The career ladder of ‘damaged’ risk for college graduates, some experts say

Artificial intelligence can cancel the entry-level work because college graduates have recently entered the job market, eliminating many positions at the bottom of the white collar career ladder or at least re-forming them, some experts told ABC News.

Such an estimate follows progress over the years in AI-fueled chatbots, and the declaration of several company executives about the beginning of AI automation.

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, who created an AI model called Claude, tells Axios Last week that technology can cut our entry-level jobs half in five years.

When Business Insider stopped 21% of its staff last week, CEO Barbara Ping said The company will go “all in AI” in an effort to “scale and operate more efficiently.”

Analysts who speak with ABC News say AI can replace or direct entry-level jobs in several fields of white collar targeted by college graduates, such as computer and legal programming.

The current job for this cohort, they added, the possibility of partially owed for economic conditions outside of technology. Many other blue and direct collar work will remain untouched by AI, they said, noting that young workers who understand technology may be the most positioned to fill new jobs that combine AI.

“We are in a dramatic change in flux,” said Lynn Wu, a professor of operations, information and decisions at the University of Pennsylvania. “I sympathize with college graduates. In the short term, they might live with mothers and fathers for a while. But in the long run, they will be fine. They are AI natives.”

During the early months of 2025, the job market for new tertiary graduates is “determining,” New York Federal Reserve said in April. That does not give a reason for trends.

The unemployment rate for new university graduates has reached 5.8%, the highest level since 2021, while the unemployment rate has soared above 40%, said Fed New York.

Youth unemployment is likely to originate from a wider economy than AI, Anu Madgavkar, Head of Labor Market Research at the McKinsey Global Institute, told ABC News

The work market is to coincide with the uncertainty of the business and the gloomy economic estimates caused by President Donald Trump’s tariff policy.

“It’s not surprising that we see this unemployment for young people,” Madgavkar said. “There is a lot of economic uncertainty.”

However, entry-level tasks in the white-collar profession stand with a serious risk of AI, said analysts, referring to the capacity of technology to carry out written and computing tasks as opposed to manual work.

AI can replace the work that was previously carried out by low -level employees, such as a legal assistant who compiled a relevant precedent for a case or computer programmer who wrote a series of basic codes, said Madgavkar.

“Is the edge of the bleeding or the first type of work to be hit a little more leaning towards the entry-level, a more basic job of getting automatically now? That might be true,” Madgavkar said. “You can have fewer people who get a footing.”

Speaking with bluntly, Wu said: “The biggest problem is that the career ladder is being damaged.”

However, most, Madgavkar said the position of the entry-level would change rather than disappear. Managers will appreciate problem solving and analysis of tasks that depend on efforts solely, he added, noting a series of required skills it is likely to include the capacity to use AI.

“I don’t think that means we will not have a request for novice level workers or fewer requests,” Madgavakar said. “I just think the hope for young people to use these tools will accelerate very quickly.”

Some jobs and tasks are mostly immune to AI automation, analysts said, referring to direct work such as manual and trade workers, as well as professional roles such as doctors and top management.

Isabella Loaiza, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies AI and Labor, participated in writing studies that examine work shifts and tasks throughout the US economy between 2016 and 2024.

Instead of removing quality such as critical thinking and empathy, workplace technology increases the needs for workers who show these attributes, said Loaiza, citing requests for jobs such as initial education teachers, health assistants at home and therapists.

“It is true that we see AI impact on the work of white collars than more blue collar work,” Loaiza said.

But, he added, “We found that a very intensive human work might be stronger.”