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AI Is Crushing Young Workers' Employment Prospects, Stanford Study Finds 160

Entry-level workers in AI-exposed occupations have seen employment drop 13% since late 2022, according to Stanford University research analyzing millions of payroll records. The decline affects software developers, customer service representatives, and administrative assistants aged 22 to 25, while employment for older workers in the same roles continued growing.

The study [PDF], based on ADP payroll data covering tens of thousands of firms, found the steepest drops in occupations where AI automates tasks rather than augments human capabilities. Among software developers aged 22-25, employment fell nearly 20% from its late 2022 peak.

Workers in less AI-exposed fields like nursing saw employment growth across all age groups. The research controlled for firm-level effects and other economic factors, isolating AI's impact from broader trends like interest rate changes and pandemic-era hiring patterns.
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AI Is Crushing Young Workers' Employment Prospects, Stanford Study Finds

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  • A lot of over 50s here who are going to find that they are completely unemployable. Uber these days pays below minimum wage.

    I guess we can all just go be plumbers right? Just like learn to code. Anyone here old enough to remember when biotech was what we were all going to be doing after the factories started automating?
    • by jhoegl ( 638955 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2025 @10:17AM (#65616578)
      The goal here isnt to replace jobs, its to suppress wages.

      The jobs are still there, go look at any job board. The fact is, they want these articles out there to make people think their job is under pressure, not needed, etc. But one only need look at job boards to find it false.
      • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        Correct. And the rich don't care where the work comes from so long as it's free to them.

      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        Are the jobs really there, or are they just being advertised? I've read a lot of comments about "ghost jobs".

        • by jhoegl ( 638955 )
          If you want to second guess data to make your position of getting paid what your worth, then you do you.

          We can only make decisions based on what we are given, and if someone wants to flood the market with fake job postings, they are only encouraging our pay to go up, because we are in demand. Not my problem they are ignorant of reality.
      • The researchers who wrote the article do not have that vested interest. They were legit trying to test if the loss of jobs is real. Your response assumes they did not do their job. That is some serious paranoia/conspiracy theorizing.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by DesScorp ( 410532 )

        The goal here isnt to replace jobs, its to suppress wages.

        That is flat out wrong. The goal was specifically to replace human beings in a wide swath of positions.

        What makes AI unique is that, unlike say, the spreadsheet, it wasn't created to make workers more productive with some skill training. It was created to completely replace a major chunk of knowledge workers, maybe most of them. And it will. AI is a jobs extinction level event. Manual work will be unaffected... AI can't fix your toilet or lay mortar in a construction site, but it's going to be the asteroid

        • The question will remain: Will the people who work at call centers now, get into coding, do a bootcamp, and then work as a software developer or just a stable code money..... will these people understand that their circumstances might not exist by the time they have gotten 2-5 tiers up the ladder?
          This question bothers me far more than thinking about the job loss, because it mirrors former events: There is a lot of workers who managed to get on the first steps in the industrial output before the outsourcing

        • It will not kill off most coding jobs, it's probably going to make them more necessary over time.

          All this is doing is creating an experience gap. Junior programmers don't get a chance to learn what it takes to ship something. There's a lot of on-the-job experience that's hard to replicate, which seems like a facile observation—if it weren't true, we'd just teach it—but I think it's something that gets forgotten now and then.

          LLMs simply do not write good code right now. They don't. It's code that

          • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

            Surface-level issues with LLMs, such as hallucinations, can be solved by programmatically providing the correct context. Deeper issues, such as the inability to perform deductive reasoning or analysis, will require completely new solutions. Until those solutions materialize, we will need people. I imagine the future junior dev will simply start out by learning how to do today's mid-level devs' work, while the very low level stuff will be relegated to LLMs.

            That means feature design, optimization, debugging,

        • AI is a jobs extinction level event. Manual work will be unaffected... AI can't fix your toilet or lay mortar in a construction site, but it's going to be the asteroid that kills off most coding jobs,

          That seems unlikely.

          It's 2025, FLOW-MATIC came out in 1955. Why FLOW-MATIC, well, it was the first attempt at making programming easier so programmers could be replaced with non programmers. In the intervening 70 years, we've had a veritable hailstorm of silver bullets[*] to make programming easier and replace

        • There are several companies making really good progress on humanoid robots. Combined with good enough ai, those will be able to fix your toilet or lay mortar at a construction site. When they get good enough, they will be able to do practically any job a human can do.
          • There are several companies making really good progress on humanoid robots. Combined with good enough ai, those will be able to fix your toilet or lay mortar at a construction site. When they get good enough, they will be able to do practically any job a human can do.

            AI-enhanced robotics will replace humans on a number of manual labor positions, but adoption will be a matter of scale. Because mobile robotics will always be expensive, they'll only be adopted where each can do the job of 10+ humans on a near 24 hour basis. Farming is a good example of where mobile robots will eventually be widely adapted. They'll pretty much pay for themselves on very large farms. But your plumbing contractor will never reasonably be able to afford them considering how much work each empl

        • AI can't fix your toilet or lay mortar in a construction site

          Yet. Continuous progress in robotics together with the combination of robots with AI can create machines good enough to replace a lot of manual jobs too. This may happen sooner than we think too: see how quickly AI has evolved from a subject for derision, with its drawings of six fingered people, to a real threat to knowledge workers. Fairly soon I expect truckers, taxi or Uber drivers and others to start feeling the pressure from autonomous cars.

          In the end, the driving force is the desire of companies to r

        • by jhoegl ( 638955 )
          Using a lot of future tense words there to justify your position, but you keep buying into that AI trope.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by vision33r ( 829872 )

        The goal here isnt to replace jobs, its to suppress wages. The jobs are still there, go look at any job board. The fact is, they want these articles out there to make people think their job is under pressure, not needed, etc. But one only need look at job boards to find it false.

        The goal is both, suppress wages and eliminate jobs.

      • It doesn't matter if there are jobs if there aren't jobs you can do.

        Plenty of people hiring diesel mechanics. None of us here can physically do that work. It's brutal, and you can't do it for very long before it physically catches up with you and you have to go work something else.
    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      That has been going on for a while. It used to be fine to get a job and work at it until retirement, but that time has been over for a while now and no connection to AI. Automation was always going to do that.

      Personally, I am lucky. IT Security experts, and in particular lecturers, with a lot of experience are in high demand and that demand for good IT security people will only increase as regulation gets stricter and the threat-landscape gets more nasty. But a lot of people are screwed and that is not good

    • by evanh ( 627108 )

      Hehe, someone to pipe up the heat-exchangers on all those new server farms.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2025 @10:40AM (#65616642) Homepage Journal

      Companies will find that because they replaced all the younger workers with AI, there aren't enough experienced ones. Unless AI dramatically improves, it's going to be a repeat of what happened with on-the-job training. Everyone needs a degree now because companies decided they didn't want to train them.

      • by wyHunter ( 4241347 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2025 @11:51AM (#65616760)
        It isn't really any different than the tech crash in the early 2000s. There were NO JOBS for entry level software people and they idea was "oh well we're going to outsource everything to India anyway." Well that didn't quite happen and since then there's a gap. Many of we grey haired guys will soon just stop working - retirement or death - and then what? It's not my problem, mine are my life and there's nothing I can do anyway.
      • Companies will find that because they replaced all the younger workers with AI, there aren't enough experienced ones. Unless AI dramatically improves, it's going to be a repeat of what happened with on-the-job training. Everyone needs a degree now because companies decided they didn't want to train them.

        Everyone needs a degree now because we watered down high school and made it worthless, then we banned companies from using IQ tests to select workers, and so the college degree became a stand in for "He's probably smart enough to do this". But now we're watering down the Bachelor's Degree, too, because it's unfair if everyone doesn't have a college degree or some nonsense.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Obviously. But CEOs are greedy idiots or uncaring assholes these days and do not expect a long tenure anyways. Hence they will take any short-term cost saving opportunities they can, and who cares if that kills the enterprise long-term.

      • if they can't find enough Americans that's literally what H1-B is for.
    • I haven't posted here in years but maybe y'all could use a bit of help...

      History of the workweek

      https://www.scry.llc/2024/12/2... [scry.llc]

      Im shocked my id still works.
      Kudos to slashdot.
      Equilibrium

      https://www.scry.llc/2025/01/2... [scry.llc]

    • by registrations_suck ( 1075251 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2025 @11:27AM (#65616720)

      I'm 54 and stricken down by terminal cancer. I'm unemployable at this point.

      I wish being "unemployable" were my biggest problem.

    • lower the medicare age!

    • You guys have been saying that over 40s are unemployable for decades now. What changed your mind to make you say that they're the only ones that are employable?

      • by XopherMV ( 575514 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2025 @01:01PM (#65616922) Journal
        They hit 40.
      • In 2013, my wife wanted us to relocate across the continent. I was 43 at the time. Facing the prospect of quitting my job (that I liked) and moving across the continent to a city where I didn't know a soul, I warned her, being over 40, that if I quit my current job, I may never have a good job again.

        We relocated. I was able to get a good job, at the same pay, simply by posting a resume on Monster.com.

        All that worry, for nothing.

        • I kept hearing that and treating it with skepticism. After being a network engineer and a security analyst for six years, I got my first job (security engineer) where the primary role is software development, in a state I never lived in, at age 41, at a company known for being very highly selective.

          A lot of questions I got were "didn't you have to know somebody there first?" Didn't know anybody. "But that must have been years ago, nobody does that anymore!" Well, 2022, but the first some somebody said that

          • ...and the new job I got was in a field I had no previous exposure to, banking.

            My previous experience was mostly related to land management, oil & gas, minerals, mining, property ownership things, etc.

            Last job was in healthcare.

    • Companies relying on AI to do the work of humans will eventually realize their mistake when 95% of their AI projects fail. Say what you want about humans, at least their projects tend to succeed. Corporate leadership now laying off people are eventually going to reverse course when reality finally catches up with them.
    • by Guignol ( 159087 )
      You're missing the real information here:
      You focus on "AI Is Crushing Young Workers' Employment Prospects"
      Now read it again, the title is: "AI Is Crushing Young Workers' Employment Prospects, Stanford Study Finds"
      This is terrible news for Stanford, if the article is even real (not AI hallucinated :)), it used to be a very good university...
    • Uber drivers make about $15-40/hr, after expenses. Don't know where you get the idea they make less than minimum wage. Perhaps amateurs do. People who actually get their shit together and learn to do the job earn somewhere between a typical low wage worker and middle class.

  • Incorrect (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CEC-P ( 10248912 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2025 @10:23AM (#65616586)
    IT hiring manager here. No, it's them being unable to type, spell, and wanting a promotion on day 1 with no experience while spouting off socialist bullshit in the office. That's why we're not hiring them. We mostly use AI to generate pictures of cats running fiber lines though.
    • by RobinH ( 124750 )
      That's interesting. For as long as I've been in the industry, programmers and IT people have tended to be libertarian, not socialist, though the GPL group has always had that scent of communism.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ak3ldama ( 554026 )
      Translation incoming...
      No, it's them being unable to type, spell, We don't want to onboard and train anyone.
      and wanting a promotion on day 1 with no experience There's no career path here, not sorry.
      while spouting off socialist bullshit in the office. Stop complaining about Israel curb stomping the poor people in Gaza.
      Seriously no one knows how to spell anymore. Red squiggles please. Young people are right to be frustrated, disillusioned, and frustrated at the state of the world today. Work isn't as re
      • Most of them aren't. This story is as old as time: The older generation usually doesn't understand the newer one, and when they don't, one of two things happen:

        1) Old man who was clinically depressed his whole life believes we're living in the worst of times ever, talks about how the younger generation is doomed because things only get bad, and from the moment you're born you start dying
        2) Old man who remembers dealing with harder times in the past who has a much easier life now says the younger generation

    • by abulafia ( 7826 )
      Another IT manager here. Who the fuck are you talking about?

      The 20-somethings we're hiring are no more entitled than they were 10 years ago, are just as technically clueless, and if anything, seem a bit more well-adjusted and mature than my cohort ever was.

      I heard a peer at my firm saying something similar recently, and I asked him for specifics. He hires Windows people, so I thought maybe there was some difference. No, he admitted, it was more of a vibe he had, partially about people in his kid's school

      • by jp10558 ( 748604 )

        Yea, I always wonder - like do people just completely forget what their life was like when they were 22 (or pick an age)? How they thought? Heck, just think back to before you were a manager or high level individual contributor or whatever.

        Yea, you never rolled your eyes at your superiors (and you're surely not doing it now re the C-Suite right?)... You never talked about how to "game the system" (I imagined all the change jobs every 3 years memes for the aughts through 2020ish).

        These people really do need

    • and wanting a promotion on day 1

      Maybe you aren't paying enough.

      while spouting off socialist bullshit in the office

      Will the horrors never end. You should be free to spout grumpy old git bullshit in the office with out those bloody youngsters getting in your way.

      IT hiring manager here

      I think you may be bad at your job. Something's pretty off with your interview process, and possibly the job and/or description that's putting off everyone who has other options.

  • by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2025 @10:23AM (#65616588) Journal

    There are absolutely areas of employment that we are going to have big shortages in several years down the road because of this.

    My wife and I both work in Radiology, and most all hospitals are having some trouble finding radiologists to read images. The cause? About 8-10 years ago it was all over the news that AI was reading medical images and doing a better job than radiologists. That caused a non-trivial percentage of medical students to choose some other specialization, believing that AI would replace enough radiologists that they wouldn't find work.

    Well, that didn't come to pass. Sure, AI is being used in some small way, mainly to flag things and bring specific areas of an image to a doctor's attention, but at this point it hasn't actually improved their workflow or the speed in which they can read images. So now we're paying the price with a shortage in radiologists.

    Now apply that scenario to almost every professional career you can think of, and imagine the shortages we're going to have 8-10 years down the line when AI didn't live up to the hype in myriad careers and fields. My prediction is trade careers (construction, plumbing, electrical, etc) are going to reach an all-time high (which is actually needed, so that's a good thing) as people pick career paths that can't be touched by AI.

    • by dfghjk ( 711126 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2025 @10:33AM (#65616628)

      The people that cause these problems don't care that they exist, they're someone else's problem. However, these people control government, that's the point. Yes, these problems are going to grow, the rich profit from it now and will profit from it later. It's just another two Santas.

      The country is doomed if its people cannot take power back from the wealthy. No one is asking for this AI bullshit, except for the rich.

      • by jp10558 ( 748604 )

        No one is asking for this AI bullshit, except for the rich.

        This just isn't true - if it was, each chatbot wouldn't have millions of monthly users. You know what happens to stuff no one is asking for? No one uses it and it tends to disappear.

        I think lots of people have been asking for AI (as it is now) to replace search for instance, because search has gotten so bad. We can debate how well suited each model is for that, but it's clear there's a search problem.

    • Isn't there a shortage of all medical specialists and non-specialists? Despite an aging population there was no effort to increase staffing since that would mean increasing the payroll. What idiot would do that when you can reduce services and raise prices.
    • >> trade careers (construction, plumbing, electrical, etc) are going to reach an all-time high

      Unfortunately those trades pay only about $35/hr in the USA. And in fact we are currently in a housing slump, the builders are laying trades people off in droves.

      • Unfortunately those trades pay only about $35/hr in the USA. And in fact we are currently in a housing slump, the builders are laying trades people off in droves.

        This is false. If you are a Journeyman level tradesman (competent to perform tasks to code without detailed explanations or constant supervision), there is plenty of work available starting at $50/hr as an employee under someone else's contractors license. More if you are a licensed & bonded contactor. My father-in-law and his brother own a construction company and are hiring. Carpentry, concrete, roofing, drywall, painting, plumbing, electrical, grading, etc. Commercial, industrial, residential.

  • Short term, AI will be overvalued by managers and will bring a lot of in house work back as things mess up. See the initial push for outsourcing... we got paid a lot to clean up other peoples code until the standards of business got worked out.

    Long term there will be a floor / ceiling issue. The floor for writing basic code will be lowered, and the ceiling for reviewing the code will be higher. Vibe coding doesn't exactly give you experience in memory management that you might need to make sure there aren't

  • by techdolphin ( 1263510 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2025 @10:44AM (#65616650)
    What happens when mid-level employees are needed, and there are none in the pipeline because AI took their jobs? AI depends on good data for training. What happens when there is no good data and AI starts to hallucinate?
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      What happens when mid-level employees are needed, and there are none in the pipeline because AI took their jobs? AI depends on good data for training. What happens when there is no good data and AI starts to hallucinate?

      That is easy. Look at what happens when countries defund the education system. Everything is fine in the short term, then it gets worse, and finally you end up with a populace voting someone like Trump into power. Except in this case it will be Cyberdyne systems.

  • by PPH ( 736903 )

    We are going to be sending our armed forces into every corner of the globe. And since AI weaponry has been deemed unethical, we will be needing grunts to pull triggers.

  • As long as it replaces a segment of the WF slowly, most people will do nothing.
  • Happy-pills are a promising growth industry

    https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]

  • After GPT-5 everyone is out there saying that AI is in a bubble.

    Some groups are already re-hiring the people they laid off.

    It's pretty terrible for newcomers today, but lets see about a year from now.
  • by zeeky boogy doog ( 8381659 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2025 @02:31PM (#65617188)
    Remember when machines were going to do all of the hard, dirty, dangerous work and free people to learn, do science and create art?

    Instead the corporatists are determined to use AI to fire everyone whose job is more than minimum wage with no benefits (except the C suite of course), while grudgingly paying the humans they hate to do jobs AI can't do yet. Now listen to this latest collection of AI slop while you stand out in the sun directing traffic past the construction zone on a summer day.
  • First, it's not AI. It's typeahead writ large.

    And Cory Doctorow reports on a report that says 95% of all companies using AI are finding it a complete fail. Meanwhile, ROI on AI for the companies making it is on the order of a billion or three... while they're burning through hundreds of billions in venture capital.

  • If your job can be effectively replaced by a small shell script.... it is not much of a job.

    Everyone deserves to live. That does not mean that anyone owes you a job. If you have nothing of value to contribute -you will earn nothing in return.

    We do not all start off with equal opportunities, but there is an abundance of opportunity out there. There is a whole -internet- full of knowledge. It has never been easier to access the collected knowledge of the human race. Learn something. Develop an interest

  • Sure, entry level might mean a young person's first job but plenty of people change careers or go back to work after a break - or at least they used to before all the low hanging fruit disappeared
  • It could be argued that diminished young people job prospects could be attributed to either AI or the continuing response to overhiring during the pandemic. I haven't read the entire paper, but this question is the key question to address. Tech was the field where perhaps the most overhiring occurred, so it's not a surprise that employment of young, inexperienced people would suffer the most in tech.

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