dkthomp
The whole piece on my new Sbtck is here --> https://derekthompson.substack.com/p/young-people-face-a-hiring-crisis In one of my last pieces for The Atlantic, I calculated that relative to the overall labor force, the recent grad job market hasn't looked this bad in at least 30 or 40 years. I wondered if AI was exacerbating this trend line in the last few years. So I called a bunch of college career services directors to get their take. They told me two things. 1. We’re already worried. “We’re all holding our breath,” said Louise Jackson, director of the career center at the University of Michigan. “The market is absolutely softening, and from what I see, it’s influenced by both economic uncertainty and AI,” said Mary Andrade, senior director of career success at Purdue University. 2. AI isn't just transforming the labor market. It's transforming every single step along the path from college to the workforce. AI is automating homework, obliterating the meaning of much testing, disrupting the labor-market signal of college achievement and grades, distorting the job hunt by normalizing 500+ annual applications per person, turning first-round interviews into surveillance experiences or straight-up conversations with robots, and, oh, after all that, maybe kinda beginning to saw off the bottom of the corporate ladder by automating some entry-level jobs during a period of economic uncertainty. The future, as they say, is unevenly distributed. If you want to see the future of AI, look at the experience of today's young college grads.
