Zaid

So let's talk about it.

CEOs and CFOs might be salivating at the idea of AI agents boosting productivity and profit margins, but there's a growing wave of anxiety about what this all means for everyday workers.

In fact, we're already starting to see that AI might be impacting entry-level jobs.

The unemployment rate for recent college graduates is 5.6%.

And if you broaden that out and look at the unemployment rate for younger workers between the age of 22 and 27, that's at 7.8%.

Now, historically speaking, that's actually not that bad, but the rate has been climbing since the post COVID bottom in 2023.

It could be a sign that companies are starting to replace entry-level workers with AI.

Anecdotally speaking, whenever I talk to college kids, the biggest problem that I hear is the lack of entry-level jobs.

In fact, recently the CEO of ServiceNow said that he thinks the unemployment rate for recent graduates could spike to as high as 30% in the next couple of years because AI agents will be able to handle tasks typically done by an entry-level or mid-level worker.

So that's a pretty big concern.

Young people might not be able to get jobs.

And then you have some companies announcing big layoffs and blaming it on AI.

In February, Block, formerly known as Square, announced that they were laying off half their workforce, about 4,000 people.

And the CEO of that company, Jack Dorsey, straight up said that it wasn't because the business was struggling, but because of the effectiveness that teams are seeing from using AI tools.

And look, Block is not the only one.

Amazon cut 16,000 jobs in January.

Atlassian cut 10% of its workforce.

And then there was a report in Reuters in mid-March that Meta is considering laying off 20% of its workforce, which would be about 15,000 jobs.

So you have all these tech companies laying off tons of people.

And then these kind of layoff announcements can create like a domino effect, causing other companies to lay off their staffs to stay lean and competitive.