Three million college graduates entered the U.S. workforce this May. In a time traditionally filled with hope, graduates are facing the anxiety of trying to get a good first job. The current unemployment rate for recent college graduates is 5.8%, up sharply from 3.9% three years ago:
Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York; U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In addition, many employers are tapping the brakes on hiring; not because business is bad, but because AI is getting good. In the past 3 months, we've seen:
Shopify's Tobias Lütke tell employees to prove “AI can’t do the job” before requesting headcount.
Duolingo's Luis von Ahn announce that new roles would only be approved if a team “cannot automate more of their work.”
Amazon’s Andy Jassy forecast a shrinking corporate workforce, citing “efficiency gains from using AI extensively.”
Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan credit AI for a decline in total employees as the bank pursues “leaner, more agile” operation.
Procter & Gamble announce a plan to cut 7,000 non-manufacturing jobs, saying teams will be smaller and more efficient by leveraging automation.
For the Class of 2025, the question isn’t just where to apply. It’s whether the role still exists.
Is AI to Blame?
The slowdown in hiring is real, but attributing it to AI misses the bigger picture.
While generative AI is transforming the workplace, it has driven very few job reductions so far. An analysis by outplacement firm Challenger found that only 2.1% of U.S. layoffs in 2024 were attributed to AI. In contrast, most reductions trace back to more traditional culprits: cost-cutting, slower growth, and broader macroeconomic shocks.
This matches historical experience. As the chart below shows, the largest employment contractions are driven by systemic economic forces, not technological disruption.
Sources: OECD Labor Force Participation Rate, Bureau of Labor Statistics Civilian Unemployment Rate
The rise in unemployment since 2023 coincides with a period of several economic shocks:
The end of the COVID-era Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP)
A global surge in inflation, raising operating costs across sectors, leading to…
…higher interest rates, decreasing investment and expansion
Geopolitical instability and tariffs disrupting global supply chains
So no, AI isn’t to blame for the current hiring slowdown. What’s happening is not a clean substitution of humans by machines, rather a technological wave adding to a volatile macroeconomic foundation. For graduates entering the workforce, the challenge is navigating both forces at once.
What the Future Holds: A Tale of Two Visionary CEOs
AI isn’t showing up in the lagging indicators of labor market change, but equally, executives aren’t building strategies around last quarter’s data. They’re planning for the future; and in those conversations, AI is a leading forward-looking variable.
Organizations across industries are now piloting AI agents, task automation, and productivity tools - not necessarily to reduce headcount immediately, but to ensure they can if competitive pressure demands it.
Two of the most influential voices in AI—Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman—offer starkly different predictions of what happens next.
Amodei: Automation Comes All at Once
In a recent interview with Axios, Amodei warns of a tipping point where “almost overnight, business leaders see the savings of replacing humans with AI - and do this en masse.” He estimates that up to half of entry-level white-collar jobs could vanish in the next 1–5 years. While CEOs publicly claim AI will free humans for higher-level work, Amodei argues behind closed doors they are "working furiously to figure out when and how agents can displace human workers at scale."
His implication is that governments and the public will be caught off-guard by the suddenness of change—and unable to respond in time.
Altman: A New Age of Abundance
In contrast, Sam Altman is betting on long-term prosperity. In his manifesto “The Intelligence Age”, Altman argues that widespread AI adoption will unlock massive productivity gains, fueling new industries, roles, and wealth.
He points to historical precedent: technologies like the computer displaced millions of roles—but created tens of millions more:
Sources: The Past and Future of Work | CESifo, Employment by industry, 1910 and 2015 | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, What History Can Teach Us About Technology and Jobs | McKinsey
For the impact of AI on jobs, the World Economic Forum forecasts that by 2030, AI will lead to the creation of 170 million new jobs while displacing 92 million, resulting in a net gain of 78 million jobs.
Two visionary CEOs with vastly divergent predictions. What now?
What’s the Truth?
In the face of competing predictions, it’s easy to get swept up in speculation. But as of June 2025, here’s what we know to be true:
✅ TRUE: Some jobs will be automated away.
AI is simply better, faster, and cheaper at many “processing” tasks—the kind of rules-based, repeatable work that has defined entry-level white-collar jobs for decades.
✅ TRUE: New jobs are being created.
Entirely new roles are emerging—some of which didn’t exist two years ago. Remember the “prompt engineer” shortage? As with past tech revolutions, new tools demand new technicians.
✅ TRUE: It’s harder to land your first job.
The labor market is tight for new graduates. At the same time, the cost of a traditional four-year degree has skyrocketed, leaving many with high debt and low return on investment. As a society, we need better models: affordable pathways teaching relevant skills to guide people to where their acquired skills are needed.
❌ FALSE: There will be no jobs for people anymore.
Humans retain distinct advantages: empathy, creativity, judgment, adaptability and crucially, physical presence. Understanding where these advantages endure is central to navigating what comes next.
What is Likely to Come Next?
To understand the path ahead, it helps to borrow an economics concept: comparative advantage. This is the idea that individuals thrive by focusing on what they do best relative to others, even when others are more capable in absolute terms.
Humans have lost comparative advantage to machines before. The loom displaced weavers. Telephone switchboards replaced operators. The ATM replaced tellers. In every case, society adapted by shifting people toward roles that machines couldn’t fulfill.
With AI, we’re at a different kind of inflection point, because these machines aren’t outdoing humans, they’re outthinking us in many knowledge-based tasks. However, humans continue to hold distinct advantages in areas including:
Relating: building trust, reading the room, showing real empathy
Creating: breaking patterns, inventing entirely new ones
Judging: drawing insight from nuance, context, and lived experience
Adapting: flexing across environments, responding to change
Showing up: being physically present in the world and with others
These abilities will become more highly prized in the next workforce era. New roles are already emerging around building, supervising, and refining AI systems, many of which require human oversight and decision-making.
We’re also likely to see a long-overdue renaissance in skilled trades and human services. Roles like electricians, carpenters, plumbers, teachers, and nurses demand physical presence, dexterity, judgment, and compassion. For decades they’ve been undervalued in the chase for white-collar credentials. In a world where the cost of intelligence is falling to zero, the value of hands-on skill and human connection is poised to rise.
How Can Graduates Increase Their Chances of Success?
LinkedIn is full of AI-era platitudes. You’ve heard them: “AI won’t take your job, but someone using AI will” or “It’s humans and AI, not humans vs. AI.” We won’t add to the pile.
Instead, here’s what we actually recommend:
❌ Don’t chase roles AI is already doing.
That includes copywriting, translating, research, and many jobs with “assistant” in the title. If AI can do the work imperfectly today, odds are it will be doing it flawlessly in two years.
✅ Do invest in skills AI can’t easily replicate.
Learn to use AI tools, but don’t stop there. Ask yourself: where do I still hold a comparative advantage? Is the role I’m targeting likely to grow or shrink in an AI-driven world?
✅ Do connect, collaborate, and contribute.
People still hire people. Build your network, stay productive, and be the kind of colleague others want on the team—adaptable, proactive, and positive.
✅ Do ask for help.
This is a hard moment to start a career. You’re not imagining it. Reach out to mentors, alumni, peers. There’s no shame in saying, “This is harder than I expected.” The people who’ve made it through rough job markets before you get it.
Here’s to the Class of 2025. May we be toasting to your resilience, adaptability, and upward trajectory in the years ahead.