IBM is tripling its entry-level hiring in the U.S. in 2026, according to a new report. This stands in stark contrast to many of the country’s largest firms, especially in the tech world, which have conducted large-scale layoffs, often for the claimed reasons of AI efficiency savings or pivoting the company's focus towards AI. IBM is explicit about its reasoning for the new roles, too, citing the importance of human-to-human interaction and the AI nativism of younger workers. As a result, IBM is bucking the wider industry trend, Bloomberg reports.
Speaking at the 2026 Leading with AI summit in New York last week, IBM’s chief human resources officer, Nickle LaMoreaux, described the false economy of layoffs in a world of AI-driven innovation and advancement. While firing those replaced by AI and reducing entry-level hiring may drive cost savings in the near term, LaMoreaux said that risked creating a longer-term scarcity of mid-level managers and experienced workers within the organization.
Without the ability to develop their own experienced employees, this would force companies like IBM to look outward in a more costly search for professionalism and expertise. New hires poached from other companies bring their own institutionalized baggage and can take longer to get up to speed on internal working practices and culture than those who have been fostered internally.
But it’s not just the case that IBM is restarting its standard hiring practices or doubling up on old job listings. It’s aware that AI has genuinely undercut the kind of positions that entry-level developers would take on. That doesn’t make those workers redundant, it just makes the work they’re needed for a little different, and arguably more specialized to what humans are particularly good at: Interfacing with other humans.
“The entry-level jobs that you had two to three years ago, AI can do most of them,” LaMoreaux explained to attendees at the Charter AI Summit. “So, if you’re going to convince your business leaders that you need to make this investment, then you need to be able to show the real value these individuals can bring now. And that has to be through totally different jobs.”
“Yes, it’s for all these jobs that we’re being told AI can do,” she said, but that workers would focus on the human-aspect of them.
That means entry-level developers are spending some time coding with AI tool assistance, but more time working with customers to define what it is they want from a coding project. New HR hires now work to refine responses from AI chatbots that answer a greater number of enquiries than HR workers could themselves. The entry-level positions are middle managers in their own right, acting as a go-between for the AI frontline and higher-level decision makers.
The wider trends
(Image credit: IBM)
The past few years have seen an increasing number of layoffs across major industries. Although there are a growing number of studies which suggest that the reason these layoffs may be more “AI washing,” than AI innovation, it’s clear that AI is causing workplace changes. Entry-level positions, particularly in programming, that were once dominated by new graduates and younger workers who can then develop into positions of capabilities and authority, are being squeezed by new AI capabilities. That’s reduced the number of opportunities, which threatens to collapse the supply chain of new, experienced workers that every industry needs to continue developing and innovating.
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