The Vanishing Entry-Level Job: How Underemployment May Be Reshaping A Generation
AI, automation, and academics are dismantling the traditional career ladder — and today’s graduates appear to be paying the price
The Reality: Underemployment Is the New Norm
Recent data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (Q1 2025) show that over 41 percent of new graduates are underemployed, working in jobs that typically don’t require a bachelor’s degree.
The St. Louis Fed notes that at initial labor-market entry, underemployment can reach as high as 52 percent, particularly for non-STEM majors.
These numbers paint a sobering picture. Today’s graduates aren’t just competing with each other, they’re competing with a glut of experienced talent. Entry-level postings routinely attract hundreds of applicants, many with three to five years of experience. Employers, facing risk-averse climates, often default to hiring “safe bets,” leaving recent grads locked out of the very entry points designed for them.
Even more troubling is more than 70 percent of Gen Z report anxiety about career prospects. Every rejection email lands harder when a student already doubts their value.
Why Academia Should Step Up
Universities have done an excellent job marketing the “college experience,” but far less in preparing students for the realities of today’s economy. The world of work has been transformed by technology, automation and AI at a very fast pace.
What’s most concerning to me is the lack of structured career guidance offered by many institutions. There’s often no cohesive program that helps students define a vision, build a network, or translate their education into employable skills.
Without a vision, the student is like a rudderless ship at sea, drifting without direction, losing time, confidence, and momentum when they embark into the real world.
Universities should challenge themselves to improve in these areas:
Build true employer partnerships that lead to internships and full-time pipelines in the many majors they offer.
Embed career readiness, communication skills, and AI literacy into every major where applicable.
Hire faculty who’ve worked in modern industries and can teach real-world application. My Audit teacher was a Big 4 Firm Partner and he opened my eyes to the real accounting world and provided me a vision of what my first year would look like.
Create structured career roadmaps that give every student a sense of direction and accountability.
The Accountability Factor: The Student Choosing and Preparing Wisely
There’s another side of this issue that’s often not discussed. Students should also take accountability for the degrees and skills they choose.
Some majors simply don’t align with current or future job demand and that reality can’t be ignored especially today. Passion is important, but employability matters too.
Universities can and should guide students showing them how to combine interest with opportunity. However, at the end of the day, students must do their homework understanding the trends, salaries, and growth trajectories of the fields they’re entering.
Congratulations You Have The Degree. Now What?
Once that degree is earned, one skill separates the few who rise from the many who stall today. This is the ability to interview exceptionally well.
In today’s hyper-competitive market, having strong interview skills is not optional, it’s essential. For entry level positions, employers hire confidence, clarity, and composure as much as they hire credentials. Knowing how to articulate your story and connect your background to a company’s needs can change everything.
A major differentiator for entry-level candidates is behavioral interviewing skills. This is the ability to respond with real examples that demonstrate problem-solving, teamwork, leadership, and initiative. This helps a graduate to articulate experiences from school, sports, or part-time work that can prove growth potential. The degree gets you in the door but your interview performance may determine whether you stay in the room.
The AI and Automation Wake-Up Call
Earlier this year, I wrote AI: Friend or Foe, exploring fears that artificial intelligence would take over human jobs. Many of those same fears now echo among new graduates and who hear constant headlines about AI “replacing” workers before they’ve even begun their career climbs.
AI isn’t replacing people. Yet. It is, however, replacing people who don’t know how to use it. Yet most universities have been slow to integrate AI into their curricula.
The Role Employers Should Play
Colleges aren’t the only ones who need to evolve. Many corporations have quietly cut the very programs designed to train new graduates — internships, rotational programs, and entry-level mentoring.
In the accounting world, for instance, even the Big Four firms are scaling back. PwC and others plan to hire roughly one-third fewer entry-level graduates over the next few years, driven by automation, offshoring, and low turnover. According to Business Insider, AI and shared-service models have eliminated large portions of traditional “first-year” work in audit and tax, reducing the need for large new-grad cohorts. (businessinsider.com)
In the legal sector, the picture is similar. U.S. law firms slashed summer associate hiring to record lows in 2024, moving recruiting cycles earlier and drastically cutting offers as client demand slowed. (reuters.com)
In engineering and tech, the trend is even more severe. A SignalFire report found that new graduate hiring in Big Tech has fallen by over 50 percent since 2019, while a Stanford study shows employment for 22- to 25-year-olds in AI-exposed roles has dropped sharply since late 2022.
These trends together tell a difficult truth: the first step on the professional ladder for graduates may be slowly disappearing across multiple industries.
When even Big Four accounting, major law firms, and tech giants are cutting entry-level hiring, it’s not just a graduate problem, it may be a quiet redefinition of how careers begin.
Ghost Jobs Causing Anxiety With Graduates
I have spoken on this topic before in a prior article, that companies should stop the growing practice of posting “ghost jobs.” These are jobs posted that aren’t truly open and created only to benchmark the market or test candidate supply. They waste time, drain morale, and mislead job seekers who may invest weeks in applications and even multiple interview rounds for a position that never actually existed.
Some ghost jobs advance through three or four rounds of interviews before the requisition quietly disappears. That’s just plain wrong and really aggravates me when I am told this by multiple recent graduates who I can tell have experienced this. Candidates deserve transparency and integrity in the application process.
What Graduates Can Do — Right Now
For recent graduates, it requires a new mindset:
Think like an entrepreneur. Don’t wait for opportunity, create it. Be persistent. Have a consistent reach out approach for potential positions you are interested in. Follow up consistently, express your desire to learn and grow. Show hunger for the position in your approach. Do everything you can to use any contacts or leads you get for a company or firm of interest and get a referral.
Apply for internships, even after graduation. They’re powerful entry points that often lead to full-time roles. Don’t discount this. I have recommended this approach to many graduates and it has produced results. All you want is a chance to get in the game. What you do with it is then up to you. Like the song: “Put me in coach, I am ready to play, today. Look at me. I can be. Entry level employee.” Yeah, I know my rendition of that song dates me a little bit. Heck, maybe a lot.
Learn more about AI and emerging tools in your field. Even basic proficiency and an understanding of at least how it is used gives you a competitive edge.
Build communication muscle. Writing, presenting, and listening well still separate good candidates from great ones.
Learn behavioral interviewing. Prepare stories that show your impact and problem-solving skills. Great examples can outweigh limited experience.
Higher Education and Employers Should Evolve Together
This generation is talented. They’re capable, creative, and hungry but they’re navigating through what feels to me is a slowly becoming outdated and quickly changing system. The world has changed faster than academia has kept pace.
Academia can’t afford to assume immunity from the very forces reshaping every other profession. If universities fail to adapt they may soon find AI impacting their own relevance, enrollment, and even careers.
Corporations, too, must shoulder their share of accountability. Many have quietly scaled back the entry-level programs that once served as launchpads for young professionals such as internships, training cohorts, and mentoring pipelines that built loyalty and long-term leadership.
Opportunity To Shine Is All They Need
A certain musical legend was rejected by many record labels for being too unconventional even different. He recorded over 50 demos in his teens, writing, arranging, and performing every instrument himself. He never gave up hope of his dream. Even though this record label passed several times like what is happening with many of our graduates applying to positions today, he had a breakthrough and went on to sign with Warner Brothers and was given full control as an artist. Something never heard of in the music industry. That musical legend was Prince.
How about a certain QB who was a sixth-round pick of the NFL draft in 2000. Very driven, intense work ethic, some would say didn’t even look like an athlete coming out of college. He never gave up hope of his dream. That entry-level guy won seven Super Bowls. Yes, Tom Brady.
Or a little basketball guard out of high school who was not offered a scholarship by any major Division I college basketball program. He was too slender and too short. Davidson College thought otherwise. The next great “entry level” performer might not look or sound like a first-round pick, but with a chance, they may just change the game of basketball. That little entry level graduate was Stephen Curry.
The Inning We Are In Today
It sure seems like we are in just the first to second inning of AI so there’s still plenty of game left to play. But we can’t sit in the dugout waiting for change. Academia should adjust its lineup, employers should rebuild their farm systems and graduates must keep stepping up to the plate. The future doesn’t belong to those who wait for the perfect pitch, it belongs to those who swing.
Closing Thoughts
This moment is not a crisis it’s a crossroads and we shouldn’t let it become a crisis. The choices we make now may determine whether we build a generation that fears the future or one that shapes it.
The machines may learn faster but they will never dream bigger. They will never feel, improvise or lead with purpose. That’s our domain and it’s time we start investing in those distinctly human advantages before we lose them altogether.
The path forward can’t just be more AI or technology, it’s more humanity. Our greatest human strengths still remains ours:
Empathy, Judgment, Creativity, Intuition, Adaptability and Purpose.
As I walk upon the Golden Gate Bridge and stare out at the City by the Bay, the mecca of AI, I think it is time we preserve our greatest treasure in the working world: Human Capital.