Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Ask employers about AI’s impact on entry-level jobs, and the answer contradicts the headlines. In a survey of nearly 1,500 executives released in May, the Strada Institute for the Future of Work found that 2.7 times more employers expect AI to boost entry-level hiring this year than to shrink it.
A second finding deserves equal, if not more, attention. AI appears to be shifting entry-level work from routine and administrative tasks to more complex responsibilities. More than 40 percent of employers report that AI has increased the analytical responsibilities assigned to entry-level employees, while a nearly identical share say it has reduced the skill-building tasks traditionally used to strengthen analytical judgment.
Rather than eliminating roles, it seems that AI appears to be making entry-level jobs more complex. This means that the bar for young workers is rising, while opportunities to “learn on the job” are going away. In essence, the durable skills — such as critical thinking, communication and collaboration — that historically have developed alongside the day-to-day activities of an entry-level job need to be present on day one.
Consider an analyst position at a consulting firm. Historically, a first-year analyst’s role was to source the data behind a client’s question, build a model to address it, assemble the deck for a presentation and (typically) rebuild the deck after hours, when last-minute feedback arrived. Today those tasks sit comfortably within reach of a large language model.
The problem is, building the deck was never really the job. The job was also standing in a client’s factory; watching a partner handle an objection no one saw coming; finding your voice and learning when to listen. It was where a twenty-something discovered that being bad at something is survivable, and that getting through a miserable week and showing up for the next one is the definition of grit. As AI replaces “deck building,” it doesn’t change the fact that young people need to know how to be pertinacious, adaptable and empathetic at work.
This should sound an alarm for anyone running an educational institution. High schools and colleges don’t create jobs, but they do determine whether a graduate leaves with the capabilities to thrive in one. One reflex is to nod at such “durable skills” and view them as useful byproducts of undertaking traditional academic work. However, that reaction fails students in real time. We cannot treat skills development as ambient — something picked up along the way. Skills like persistence, creativity and communication need to be embedded into our academic standards, and young people need access to real-world experiences — whether in jobs, internships, labs, group projects or experiential work — to develop their “durable skills,” particularly as AI absorbs more and more functions of entry level work.
There are no simple fixes here, but there are things we can start doing now.
To school and university leaders: Building these capabilities cannot live at the margins of the curriculum, tucked into a senior capstone or a leadership elective. They must be central to the purpose of school. Every high school and university in the country should be able to answer these questions.
- Is skill development infused into every course, or does it live at the edges of the curriculum?
- If asked to prove that a student possesses a particular skill, could we produce actual evidence, or only make an assertion?
- Do our grades, transcripts and admissions criteria reflect and reward these skills?
To policymakers: A country cannot credential what it does not define. Shared, science-based standards for these skills, and assessments rigorous enough to make them real, are public infrastructure — no less than the American high school itself was a century ago. The Carnegie Foundation is working on this challenge now.
To employers: The tasks you’re automating were never only tasks; they were the apprenticeship that produced your directors, partners and successors. It is great that you’re demanding more judgment from your youngest hires; however, be careful not to dismantle the machinery that builds it. Those gaps won't appear on this quarter’s balance sheet: They will appear in 15 years, in a generation that reached mid-career without enough reps to achieve mastery. Investing now — in the schools training your future workforce, and in new ways of building capability inside your company — is not philanthropy; it’s good business strategy.
A century ago, when agricultural employment collapsed from one-third of the American workforce to eight percent, we didn’t tinker with the schools we had. We built the ones we needed — roughly one high school a day — for 30 years. That is the ambition and scale this moment demands. We must define the human capabilities that matter most and build schools to teach them on purpose. We did it once, when the economy changed under our feet. We can do it again.
In partnership,
%20(2).png?width=450&upscale=true&name=CAR%20logo_INTER_Black@4x%20(1)%20(2).png)
.png?width=600&upscale=true&name=CFN_600x400_Feb24_v4%20(2).png)
