The Rise of Young Workers Being Replaced by AI

Image Credit: Andy Kelly Via Unsplash

“Companies need humans,” a recruiter assured me, but only after half an hour outlining the extent of AI in dismantling the graduate job market. “Don't worry,” she said. Even though entry-level UK job postings have fallen by almost a third since the launch of ChatGPT, they're “morphing.”

“We are the boss, not AI” insisted Stella Leguizamon, a careers coach and early-careers recruiter. It was a reassuring note in a conversation otherwise dominated by warnings: according to analysis from the IPPR, up to 8 million UK jobs could be affected by AI, with entry-level workers being among the most exposed. But instead of treating this moment as the beginning of a full-scale employment crisis, Leguizamon argued that this misses something crucial.

But I wasn’t so sure. As I began university, AI was nothing more than a mildly amusing convenience; a tool that could summarise readings well enough to shave an hour off a library session. Now, in my third year, it has advanced so quickly that, if I were willing to set aside my scruples completely, it could probably write half of my degree. In the space of a single cohort, AI has shifted from novelty to an essential tool. What once sounded like an eccentric sci-fi movie plot now has taken center stage in the middle of the graduate job hunt.

To understand what this meant for young workers, I asked Stella to map out the risks. She didn’t sugar-coat them. “Many (entry-level)  jobs may be taken over by AI… repetitive jobs or ones in administrative roles.”

And she’s right.

The roles most vulnerable to automation are often the very tasks assigned to newcomers: data processing, database management, scheduling, inventory tracking.  The dull, but essential groundwork of many early careers.

The IPPR’s findings back this sad reality. Their analysis suggests that 11% of UK jobs are already vulnerable to the “first wave” of AI - the phase we are in now, where existing tools automate routine cognitive tasks. 

But the risk rises sharply in a projected “second wave,” where companies will begin to seep AI deeper into their operations. At such a point, automation could expand to cover up to 59% of workplace tasks, spilling into work once considered safe from artificial intelligence, including more complex database creation and maintenance. For companies chasing efficiency, automation is an obvious cost-cutting measure. But for students and young workers, it means that the market we once knew is shifting.

And yet, the bleakness of this picture doesn’t capture the whole story. As Stella pointed out, AI replaces tasks, not people. The labour market will shift dramatically, and young workers will be the first to feel that shift. But this does not mean the death of all early careers. It means they will be restructured. AI may hollow out some roles, but it will also create new ones: roles requiring communication, ethical reasoning, original thought: all things which machines imitate badly, if at all. Entry-level work is not disappearing, it is morphing .

The real question is whether young workers will be given a fair chance to adapt. If companies are going to offload routine work onto AI, then they must also create meaningful pathways for juniors to develop higher-value skills. That requires more than corporate platitudes about “embracing innovation”. It demands deliberate investment in human development and policy change. Otherwise, AI won’t replace us, but it will leave a generation unprepared as well as locked out of progression.

Stella remains confident. After everything she’d laid out, she returned to the line she wanted to leave me with: “We are the boss, not AI.”