With AI, the kneebone's connected to the thighbone...

A couple of articles from The Guardian in London in the past day or so have signalled concerns about the role AI may already be playing in the job market.

Richard Partington, the paper’s Senior Economics Correspondent, weighs up the extent to which the jobs lost in the UK since Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Budget last autumn (over a quarter of a million) are down to the tech or broader economic factors.

Clearly businesses have been stung by the increased cost of national insurance and the living wage, although Partington makes the valid point that rising labour costs may encourage employers not just to take on fewer workers, but also to invest more in AI as a cheaper alternative. Presumably we’ll then need even fewer workers.

In another Guardian piece, Dan Milmo and Lauren Almeida spoke to recruitment agencies and employment experts about entry-level jobs for university graduates. We’ve seen announcements recently that have certainly sparked concern.

Some differences of opinion were revealed over the extent to which AI is already restricting opportunity in 2025. But James Reed, Chief Executive of the employment agency that bears his family name, is quoted as saying: ‘This feels like the year that AI is really changing and getting embedded - for better or for worse.’

Better, we suspect, for employers in terms of cutting overheads and expanding profit margins. Worse, however, for people looking to start out on the career ladder and earn a living.

I am very interested in the chain reaction that this discrete, but important, part of the job market has. What are the ripple effects? They impact a variety of points on the educational and career timeline.

If we assume that entry-level jobs are going to head into decline because of AI, there’s a clearly going to be a crisis at some point in the not-too-distant future. Organisations seeking to fill more senior roles will find that the ready pipeline of people trained by doing the ‘grunt’ work will no longer exist.

The idea that no one has thought of this is preposterous. So we must assume that any businesses scaling back graduate numbers in favour of bots and AI agents are counting on many fewer people being needed in senior roles in the future. (My guess is this will be a conscious thought on the part of C-suite business leaders and a kind of nagging and perplexing doubt in the minds of the HR folk who’ve been encouraged to puff on the AI hookah, which they’re repeatedly told is harmless.)

In this respect, a major decline in entry-level jobs in the coming years - as predicted by Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic (the AI business funded by Amazon and Google) - will signal a much bigger loss of employment down the line.

But let’s think of the ripple effects in the opposite direction.

If it becomes increasingly hard to get a graduate job, fewer people will want to go to university. They have to rack up large amounts of debt and the only solace on offer is the thought that they might make their way into a well-paid and secure career. AI pulls the rug from under their feet.

Fewer people going to university spells a crisis for many institutions, which are already struggling financially and seeing a decline in overseas applications. More courses will close, with job losses for academic and administrative staff. Some universities will be under even more pressure to merge or address tough choices about their long-term viability.

For those students still choosing a university education despite a shrinking range of options on graduation, it will be important to select subjects that lead to some kind of vocational pathway in a reshaped world. Perhaps we’ll see an increase in people opting for hands-on, practical subjects with more prospects? Nursing or event management or pharmacy.

And what about schools? What careers advice can teaching staff realistically give the youngsters? In ambitious educational environments, the suggestion was always to go to university. The subject wasn’t necessarily important, because perhaps you’d eventually aim for one of those nice generic jobs in accounting, finance or consulting.

You’d end up on a graduate scheme and ‘rotate’ yourself around the business until you found your niche.

You’d then do your time on the dogsbody work knowing that, sooner or later, you’d have learnt your trade and would move up the ladder towards greater recognition and reward.

The certainties have now disappeared. And the possibilities for secure careers seem ever-more limited.