AI is creating a job boom – except for those just starting out

Companies compete for AI experts while closing the door to recent graduates

As large North American companies rush to fill vacancies linked to artificial intelligence, those trying to enter this sector for the first time are being left behind.

A new investigation, released exclusively to CNN, concludes that job opportunities in the most dynamic area of ​​the economy are often reserved for professionals with extensive experience, not beginners.

The vast majority — 71% — of artificial intelligence-related job ads posted by S&P 500 companies on LinkedIn include openings for data analysts or machine learning engineers (machine learning), is aimed at senior-level professionals, according to the AI-Driven Enterprise (AIDE) Institute, a research organization that tracks how companies are implementing this technology.

Only 13% of these AI-related ads are for junior positions, while 16% are considered mid-level positions. Researchers reached these conclusions after analyzing more than 161,000 job advertisements published in January by large companies.

The results highlight the challenge facing young Americans looking for work in the growing AI sector. Large companies are engaged in a real hiring war to capture the same pool of experienced professionals, raising doubts about how they will attract the next generation of talent.

Workers are already facing difficulties in this job market, in a context marked by fears that AI will replace human workers. , many companies have reduced headcount and integrated artificial intelligence more deeply into their operations.

“The anxiety has been around the replacement of humans with AI. What the data shows is actually a tighter job market, where the opportunity associated with AI is real, but it is reserved for those already at the top,” says Paul Cheek, executive director of the AIDE Institute and senior professor at MIT, quoted in the report. “The traditional gateway to a high-growth area has become very narrow.”

“Built for experts”

Cheek explains that companies are looking for experienced professionals to help them navigate the rapid growth of artificial intelligence.

“Most of these technologies are very new and changing quickly. Companies want people to analyze them based on solid experience,” he says.

Researchers at the AIDE Institute analyzed 161,645 job ads posted on LinkedIn by S&P 500 companies and ranked them according to their relevance to AI and the level of experience required. Functions were considered related to artificial intelligence when they included one of 50 previously defined positions, including data analyst, machine learningAI engineer, director of AI, or vice president of AI, or when the job description contained one of 125 terms associated with the technology.

8,140 AI-related ads were identified that researchers said were “overwhelmingly targeted at experienced professionals, leaving few opportunities for beginners.”

“The AI ​​hiring boom is real — but it was built for experts,” the report concludes.

Still, there is a risk that large companies’ investment in experience is a short-term strategy. If young talent chooses to look for opportunities elsewhere, such as fast-growing artificial intelligence startups trying to gain market share, this could pose a long-term threat to more established companies.

“CEOs need to prioritize AI talent at all levels of the organization,” argues Cheek. “They should not just think about senior professionals, but also about the intermediate and junior roles they are preparing for the future.”

“Stagnant” youth employment

The difficulties entering the artificial intelligence industry reflect the problems faced by younger workers across the economy.

The unemployment rate for recent graduates was 5.6% in March, significantly above the global unemployment rate of 4.2% recorded that same month, according to the .

The difference between the unemployment rate of recent graduates and that of the general workforce has increased in recent years, compared to the period immediately before and after the Covid-19 pandemic, when both evolved in a very similar way.

One from Stanford University concluded that employment among younger workers has remained “stagnant” since late 2022, when OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT paved the way for the current artificial intelligence gold rush.

In professions most exposed to artificial intelligence, young workers saw a 6% drop in employment between the end of 2022 and September 2025, while older workers saw increases of between 6% and 9%.

The Stanford researchers say the results suggest that reduced employment in the professions most exposed to AI is contributing to young people’s broader difficulties in finding work.

Entry-level jobs are being “structurally eliminated”

All of this is fueling workers’ anxiety about the advancement of artificial intelligence.

“Junior level isn’t just shrinking — it’s being structurally eliminated,” says Hiro, a pseudonym used by a mid-level service industry professional who writes about the future of work on the Medium platform and who agreed to speak to CNN on condition of anonymity.

According to Hiro, the problem is that the frequent, lower-risk tasks that were traditionally assigned to younger professionals — such as first versions of documents or routine processing — are precisely those that artificial intelligence performs best.

As these tasks are carried out by AI, “what remains is senior oversight of the results produced by artificial intelligence.” “This means that experience is now required to enter, but the traditional path to acquiring this experience no longer exists,” he explains.

Gaining experience outside the job market may involve attending training aimed at developing skills. Hiro says he spent $4,000 (about €3,500) on training, only to find that these new skills were outdated after eight months due to the emergence of a new generation of AI models.

“‘Continue developing skills’ stops being career advice and becomes a treadmill that demands us to continue on it”, he laments.

The future of work

Nela Richardson, chief economist at payroll giant ADP, tells CNN that artificial intelligence isn’t just changing the number of jobs created and eliminated — it’s also transforming the tasks and responsibilities associated with the roles.

ADP is working with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab to disaggregate job responsibilities and use salary data to assign economic value to specific tasks.

According to Richardson, the results of this work, which should be publicly disclosed, could help employers transfer workers to higher value-added roles and help job seekers identify more suitable training and education paths.

These efforts are expected to help reduce anxiety around the impact of AI on early-career workers.

“The task of employers is not to throw away these young people’s career ladder just because the first rung has disappeared,” maintains Richardson. “The challenge is to give young people a boost to that second step, with more complex, higher-value tasks and responsibilities, which are precisely those for which companies are hiring. The entry point has just moved to a higher level.”

*Alicia Wallace and David Goldman contributed to this report