Azeem Azhar's Exponential View
Where did all the entry-level jobs go? (With Revelio CEO Ben Zweig)
14 Nov 2025
Junior roles in AI-exposed fields are disappearing fast. The obvious culprit is AI rapidly automating entry-level jobs. And yet, this isn't quite right. What is driving the drop is managers’ expectations about what AI will do, not the work that it's already replacing. I discussed this with Ben Zweig of Revelio Labs, which builds global workforce data from millions of individual profiles to track hiring, separations and job flows. Their data shows how expectation and uncertainty are reshaping the market.Together, we explored the future of work and shared practical advice for new grads. We covered: (01:15) What's happening in the labor market? (05:27) The inherent complexity of the labor market (06:24) How Revelio Labs captures labor market data (08:39) "The Canary in the Coal Mine" (11:52) Who does AI exposure harm the most? (13:01) How AI anticipation is harming the job market (15:15) Testing the expectation mismatch hypothesis (17:30) Could AI be creating more jobs? (20:44) Breaking down jobs into smaller tasks (27:33) Why large companies struggle to reorganize (30:35) Focus on creating adaptive, flexible roles (36:03) Managing AI's increasing capability (39:11) What entry-level workers need to do Where to find me: - Exponential View newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/ - Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/ - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhar - Twitter/X: https://x.com/azeem Where to find Ben: - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-zweig/ - Twitter/X: https://x.com/BJZweig - Revelio Labs: https://www.reveliolabs.com/ Production by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1 Production and research: Chantal Smith, Hannah Petrovic and Marija Gavrilov. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Full Episode
today I want to talk about jobs. There are lots of worrying headlines about the job markets. We've heard about big layoffs at firms like Amazon and other companies going into hiring freezes like Walmart. We've heard that entry-level jobs are under pressure from AI that the amount of graduate hiring there is, is going down. So what should we make of this?
Is this artificial intelligence and its early effects on human work? Or is AI just a convenient excuse for bosses looking to manage their costs? To explore this, I've asked Ben Zweig of Revelio Labs to join me. He is one of the more thoughtful founders and thinkers on the topic of the labour market.
And in this moment in time when the BLS, the Bureau of Labour Statistics, has gone dark and become unreliable, Ben's work at Revelio Labs is providing a private sector take on what's happening in the job market at large. So Ben, I hope you're going to be able to bring some clarity to this confusion and join me as we jointly explore what's happening to the world of work.
Yeah, thanks for having me. Let's get started with what the headlines say. You know, the headlines for a decade have talked about the threat of automation to the world of work. I think it's now been 12 years since my friend Carl Frey and his collaborator Michael Osborne published that famous paper about the way in which machine learning might affect human tasks.
And as we move into 2025, we are starting to hear stories. The entry-level job market in particular seems to be collapsing. When you look across your data at Revelio and give us a moment to understand what data Revelio looks at and gathers, what is the most accurate description of what's happening in the labor market?
I think you're largely right that the job market is not very good right now. So hiring is at a low. Also, attrition is at a low. So people are not leaving jobs as much, even despite increases in layoffs. But, you know, separations from jobs, you know, are not happening to the same degree as they used to be. And that is particularly affecting young workers.
But what's interesting about this is I think you kind of touched upon this idea Brynjolfsson paper, you know, and others out of Stanford that highlight that there is an interaction between entry-level workers and AI exposure. And that's research that we've done at Revelio as well early on. But I think, you know, the researchers have gone a little deeper into it.
And I think it is credible that AI seems to be affecting entry-level work. But notably, it's not causing technological unemployment like was predicted by Osborne and Frey or was predicted 100 years ago from John Maynard Keynes. You know, in 1930, he wrote, you know, economic possibilities for our grandchildren and predicted in 100 years we'd all be working two day work weeks.
I think it was 15 hours. So it was a 15 hour, 15 hour week. It hasn't quite been 100 years, so maybe in 2030 we'll see that he's right, but it doesn't look like he'll be right. So we're not seeing technological unemployment, but we are seeing decreases in demand for entry-level workers, and that is particularly concentrated among AI-exposed roles. I think you could say, oh, well, you know,
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