{"id":189870,"date":"2026-03-04T10:03:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T10:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/189870\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T10:03:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T10:03:09","slug":"gen-z-is-paying-the-price-for-lack-of-experience-as-ai-takes-their-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/189870\/","title":{"rendered":"Gen Z is paying the price for lack of experience as AI takes their jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"

While millions of Gen Z workers face unemployment in the white-collar AI \u201cjob apocalypse,\u201d<\/a> older and more experienced workers are faring well, according to new research<\/a> from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

AI adoption is more complicated than technology simply taking over jobs, wrote J. Scott Davis, Dallas Fed assistant vice president, who authored the study. In AI-exposed industries, the technology is actually helping experienced workers elevate their work by outsourcing tasks to AI and allowing them to focus on work that adds more value to a company.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf AI were simply automating jobs, we would expect both wages and employment to decline,\u201d Davis wrote.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the case, he explained. His analysis of wage data since fall 2022 revealed AI\u2019s impact is being felt very differently across industries because of the types of jobs the technology threatens. It comes down to the kind of knowledge needed for entry-level jobs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cReturns on job experience are increasing in AI-exposed occupations,\u201d Davis wrote. \u201cYoung workers with primarily codifiable knowledge and limited experience will likely face challenging job markets.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Entry-level workers are experts in book learning, Davis explained, which AI can easily automate. Older workers have understanding gained through experience, which is more difficult for AI to replicate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Across the world, AI job disruption is concentrated most among young workers in the tech and finance sectors. A February report from the Irish Department of Finance found<\/a> that employment for younger workers dropped by 20% between 2023 and 2025, while it grew by 12% for \u201cprime-age\u201d workers (ages 30 to 59).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

A similar trend is happening in the U.S. One study<\/a> found that since 2021, employment has declined 1% in the top 10% of AI-exposed sectors such as law, finance, and education. Workers ages 22 to 25 have felt the loss most profoundly, while the employment of older workers has grown, researchers at Stanford University found<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

AI is already reorganizing companies\u2019 org charts. Anthropic\u2019s Boris Cherny, the creator of Claude Code, recently said the title \u201csoftware engineer\u201d\u2014once a foundational entry-level position at every Big Tech company\u2014could be extinct<\/a> by the end of 2026. Cherny hasn\u2019t coded since November, and has completely given over his time-intensive coding tasks to Claude.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I think back to engineering a year ago, no one really knew what an agent was, no one really used it,\u201d he said. \u201cBut nowadays it\u2019s just the way that we do our work,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Adopting AI for entry-level tasks has not been a one-size-fits-all across Big Tech. IBM<\/a> announced last month it\u2019s tripling the number<\/a> of Gen Z entry-level jobs, including \u201csoftware developers and all these jobs we\u2019re being told AI can do,\u201d Nickle LaMoreaux, IBM\u2019s chief human resources officer, said at an event<\/a> hosted by the workplace newsletter company Charter.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe companies three to five years from now that are going to be the most successful are those companies that doubled down on entry-level hiring in this environment,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wages are largely unaffected by AI<\/p>\n

Dallas Fed\u2019s Davis also found AI job losses are having little to no effect on wage growth because many of the most AI-exposed jobs also have higher differences between experienced and entry-level wages.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These are the same fields in which wages are growing the most. Since fall 2022, wages in the computer systems design sector have increased by 16.7%, compared to a 7.5% national average, Davis found. Wages in the top decile of AI-exposed industries grew by 8.5% as entry-level positions have declined by 16%, according to Davis and a separate Stanford study<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The opposite is true in roles such as fast-food cooks, ticket agents, and dry cleaners in which AI can replace both entry-level and experienced positions, which are experiencing negative wage growth, Davis found.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that AI can both substitute for entry-level workers and complement experienced workers has implications for society and the way we organize work,\u201d Davis wrote. The current model of relying on entry-level workers to slowly gain knowledge through experience needs rethinking, he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFirms are going to find that AI is making this method of employee development cost-ineffective, at least in the short run,\u201d Davis wrote. \u201cOf course, leaving new employees off the job ladder is not sustainable in the long run. In the long run, AI adoption will require rethinking how entry-level employees gain experience on the job.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While millions of Gen Z workers face unemployment in the white-collar AI \u201cjob apocalypse,\u201d older and more experienced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[26981,5521,102,104,103,7291,2184,75433,65850],"class_list":["post-189870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-careers","tag-compensation","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-hiring","tag-jobs","tag-the-future-of-work","tag-wages"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}