IT Essentials: What's happened to all the entry level jobs?

As the current crop of graduates and school leavers wait in vain for a reply - any reply - to their emailed applications, the question arises: where have all the entry level jobs gone?

It's quite a turnaround from two or three years ago, post-pandemic, when it was a seller's market and all the talk was of the menace of “quiet quitting”. Quite the opposite in fact.

You may have a qualification sold as a guaranteed passport to a steady job - cybersecurity or data science for example. No matter. You're banging on the same locked door as everyone else, a door that will only be opened a chink should you have some prior experience. It’s the classic jobseekers Catch 22 but on a much wider scale than before.

This turnaround has happened suddenly, prompting murmurs that AI may be to blame. These suspicions are fuelled by the self-aggrandising predictions of a white-collar jobs apocalypse by some tech CEOs, for whom any publicity is good publicity. But is AI really to blame? After all the vanguard of the "lets replace the humans" brigade - the Klarnas, McDonalds et al. - had to beat a hasty retreat after customers said they preferred meat.

Indeed, it's hard to believe that AI, in its current state, is displacing enough jobs to cause the entry level job drought. However, AI recruitment systems could be part of the problem, prematurely rejecting suitable candidates for spurious reasons, such as not using ChatGPT to write their CVs.

But while AI systems may not be capable of replacing many entry level jobs at present they may be in a couple of years' time. One possible (and partial) explanation for the dearth in entry level jobs is that the rapid pace of AI development is being used as an excuse to hold off on hiring. In uncertain times, why go to the time and expense of training a new recruit when AI might soon be able to do some of the work?

In recent Computing research among UK IT leaders, 17% admitted they were holding off on hiring junior positions because AI may be able to do these jobs, while 22% mentioned tax and national insurance changes.

We'll be discussing this issue in depth on Thursday at Computing's IT Leaders Summit in London. Do come along if you can. We can guarantee a fascinating day, and it would be great to see you there.