---
title: "Is generative AI removing the bottom rung of careers?"
description: "Employment is rising as a keyword in the economics journals, and generative AI is growing there fast. Yet of nearly 1,200 recent papers on employment, wages and labour markets, only 14 carry a generative-AI keyword. Is AI taking the tasks that junior workers used to learn on, and what happens to their careers?"
url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/generative-ai-and-entry-level-jobs
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/generative-ai-and-entry-level-jobs.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
date: "2026-10-23"
updated: "2026-10-23"
status: "seed"
tags: ["economics", "management", "ai", "labor"]
keywords: ["young workers", "employment effects", "generative AI"]
---

# Is generative AI removing the bottom rung of careers?

Employment is rising as a keyword in the economics journals, and generative AI is growing there fast. Yet of nearly 1,200 recent papers on employment, wages and labour markets, only 14 carry a generative-AI keyword. Is AI taking the tasks that junior workers used to learn on, and what happens to their careers?

## What prompted this

In the economics journals, "employment" had 16 papers in July–September 2026 against about 8 expected, "labor market tightness" 6 against 1, and "generative AI" 9 against 3 (see the [economics dashboard](/categories/economics)). Since October 2025, 1,181 papers carry an employment, labour-market or wage keyword (918 in economics journals). Only 14 of them also carry a generative-AI, language-model or ChatGPT keyword, and "young workers" appears on 10.

## Questions

- In occupations most exposed to generative AI, has hiring of new graduates fallen since 2023 relative to hiring of experienced workers?
- Do firms that adopt AI change their training and promotion ladders?
- Do workers who started their careers in exposed jobs earn less years later?

## Data that could help

Online job postings (Lightcast), worker profiles (LinkedIn, Revelio), occupational task data (O*NET) to measure AI exposure, and payroll or administrative employment data.

## Next step

Compare monthly entry-level and experienced job postings by occupational AI exposure from 2021 to 2026.

## Related research activity

*The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26*

| Keyword | Papers, last 30 days | Rank | Papers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26* | Papers, last 36 months |
|---|---:|---:|---|---:|
| young workers | 1 | #2881 | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 4, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 1 | 20 |
| employment effects | 3 | #776 | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 8, 7, 7, 6, 2, 7, 5, 7, 4, 6, 2, 4, 8, 6, 9, 3, 7, 6, 3, 6, 6, 3, 8, 4, 3, 4, 4, 9, 3, 5, 3 | 162 |
| generative AI | 15 | #57 | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 13, 16, 8, 13, 12, 12, 17, 7, 10, 14, 20, 30, 18, 12, 23, 28, 25, 19, 29, 38, 23, 34, 20, 35, 44, 30, 43, 34, 45, 29, 13 | 701 |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Is generative AI removing the bottom rung of careers?. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/generative-ai-and-entry-level-jobs

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-generative-ai-and-entry-level-jobs,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Is generative AI removing the bottom rung of careers?},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/generative-ai-and-entry-level-jobs}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).