End of Entry-Level Jobs?

If you’re 22, fresh out of college, and ready to launch your career… surprise! AI just stole your starter job and didn’t even bother to leave a thank-you note. A new Stanford study says entry-level positions in customer service and software development are down 13 percent since ChatGPT and its AI cousins arrived. That’s not disruption, that’s AI kicking the door in, eating your lunch, and then asking you to debug its code.

The researchers called young workers the “canaries in the coal mine,” which is basically a fancy way of saying, “Congrats, you’re the disposable test subjects.” Older workers? Totally fine. They’ve got “soft skills” and “institutional knowledge” translation: they’ve mastered the art of sounding authoritative while saying nothing in meetings. AI still can’t compete with Karen from HR, who terrifies interns with just a raised eyebrow.

Meanwhile, the tech giants are squirming like kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar. OpenAI is insisting, “No, no, we’re here to help jobs, not kill them.” Google’s Gemini team is sitting in the corner, smirking, “At least this headline isn’t about us laying people off this week.” Anthropic is waving around its “safe AI” badge like that solves unemployment. And Elon? He’s probably tweeting something like, “If Grok stole your job, it’s because you’re lazy. Also, a Mars colony soon.”

Let’s be real, the irony is too good. For years, millennials and Gen Z were told, “Learn to code. That’s where the future is.” So they learned to code. Then AI learned to code faster, better, and without crying over Stack Overflow threads at 2 a.m. Customer service? Gone too. Why hire a 22-year-old to say “I’m sorry to hear that” when you can pay a bot that never sleeps and delivers fake empathy at machine-gun speed?

Here’s the bigger problem: entry-level jobs aren’t just jobs, they’re training wheels. They’re where you screw up, learn how offices actually work, and slowly climb the ladder. If AI saws off the bottom rung, the ladder isn’t a ladder anymore; it’s a wall. Good luck scaling it without ropes, kids.

And governments? Don’t make me laugh. They’ll hold hearings, yell at tech CEOs for three hours on live TV, and then “form a committee to explore options.” By the time they actually pass anything useful, your grandkids will be competing with GPT-27 for jobs at the AI-run McDonald’s.

Here’s the plot twist: Stanford has exposed the receipts, AI is eating the job market from the bottom up, and Big Tech is passing the blame like a hot potato. Older workers are fine, sipping their lattes and talking about “mentorship,” while younger workers are outside applying for jobs that don’t exist. The only real winners here? The bots, who are sitting in the corner, laughing in binary.

When the entry-level ladder disappears, do you climb anyway, or do you just accept that your new boss is a chatbot that thinks bathroom breaks are optional?

- Matt Masinga