{"id":476007,"date":"2026-05-31T10:57:31","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T10:57:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/476007\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T10:57:31","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T10:57:31","slug":"what-if-remote-working-not-ai-is-to-blame-for-weak-junior-hiring-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/476007\/","title":{"rendered":"What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Graduates and other new entrants to the world of work have had a rough few years. A cool labour market for everyone has been icy for the youngest, with hiring of junior workers lagging the more experienced across a wide range of countries.<\/p>\n

The early-career hiring pullback has been especially pronounced in white-collar work \u2013 software and other tech roles foremost among them \u2013 leading observers to point to an obvious culprit: the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) <\/a>tools that can perform much of the work typically done by juniors, but are less able to replace the accumulated knowledge and experience of seasoned professionals.<\/p>\n

But a paper published last week suggests the particular woes of young would-be knowledge workers may not be due to AI, or at least not as much as assumed. <\/p>\n

What other large recent shock could tick the same boxes \u2013 hurting junior hiring more than senior, affecting knowledge work roles more than blue-collar jobs and hitting young coders especially hard? The authors Peter John Lambert and Yannick Schindler have a fascinating counterproposal: the take-off of remote work.<\/p>\n

The theory is persuasive. Early-career workers require more supervision than experienced hires, and build important skills, knowledge and social capital by observing and working alongside senior colleagues. Working from home adds friction to these processes, making entry-level workers more costly to bring on board in terms of time and resources and slowing their prospects for promotion. <\/p>\n

As such, the rise of remote work has worsened the trade-off for hiring entry-level workers, while leaving the calculus for senior hires unchanged.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Ireland\u2019s great AI job displacement: \u2018Every employer, every worker should be talking about this\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The evidence fits the theory. Lambert and Schindler analysed hundreds of millions of new hires and job postings and found that although both occupational exposure to AI and remote working rates line up with the outsized pullback in junior hiring, the link with AI evaporates once you account for whether a role is remote. <\/p>\n

In other words, it only looks like AI is behind the hiring crunch for junior software developers because coding jobs are also disproportionately done remotely. Jobs less exposed to AI but amenable to remote work (eg lawyers) have also seen weak junior hiring; roles with high AI exposure but an emphasis on in-person work (eg receptionists) have held up better.<\/p>\n

\"\"Will new pay transparency rules close the gender pay gap for good?<\/p>\n

None of this rules out AI as a threat to younger workers \u2013 remote work may even be a risk factor for AI displacement, since managers who mainly interact with reports over Slack may view their work as more automatable. <\/p>\n

The process may also be indirect: companies struggling to train and manage remote juniors may set a higher bar when hiring for these roles, with unfilled posts compounding into the trend we see in the data.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0What are the jobs AI won\u2019t be coming for?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

But whatever the mechanism, Lambert and Schindler\u2019s results are the latest evidence that for all the attention paid to the impact of AI, the take-off of remote work has been a hugely consequential and often under-discussed shift, with significant and unexpected impacts on the economy and society.<\/p>\n

Many of these have been pleasant surprises. One study earlier this year found that US fathers in remote-friendly occupations used the extra time at home to take on more childcare, and their wives\u2019 earnings and employment rate rose. Another found remote work boosts birth rates.<\/p>\n

Nobody would argue these are shifts we should reverse, but the new data underscores a recurring result from remote work research \u2013 that what benefits mid- or late-career workers can harm the youngest.<\/p>\n

They also help explain an underappreciated nuance to the story: contrary to the stereotype of boomers demanding that Gen Z return to the office, it is the youngest generation who is most opposed to fully remote roles and keen for their colleagues to spend more time in the office.<\/p>\n

The rise of working from home has been a boon for thirtysomethings (such as myself) who are safely on the career conveyor belt and often juggling work with parenting. <\/p>\n

But it has hit the youngest workers twice: slowing their climb up the career ladder and now perhaps keeping some out of the labour market entirely.<\/p>\n

Demands for a return to five days in the office are a step too far \u2013 the evidence consistently shows hybrid arrangements get the best results \u2013 but next time you hear calls for an extra day in person, bear in mind the biggest beneficiaries won\u2019t be the bosses, they\u2019ll be the juniors. \u2013 Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Graduates and other new entrants to the world of work have had a rough few years. A cool…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80,1962],"class_list":["post-476007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}