“Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.” That’s a direct quote from Ford CEO Jim Farley from earlier this month. And he is not the only executive ringing the alarm.
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas recently told The Verge that he expects AI to be able to replace recruiters and executive assistants in the next six months. The warnings are plenty, and the timeline the executives give is relatively short. But the reality may be even more imminent.
“The disruption of jobs is already underway, it’s expanding rapidly and it will continue to,” according to John McCarthy, associate professor of global labor and work at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
Anthropic’s latest AI assistant, released on July 15, pretty much does all the work that a finance intern would do at an average Wall Street firm. Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke told the company’s hiring managers that they have to explain why an AI agent can’t do the job before they can go ahead with hiring new workers, in an internal memo earlier this year. Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn sent a similar memo to workers this year.
“We can certainly say we are facing a serious breakdown in early stages of white-collar careers, and that’s really important because that’s where economic security begins and where we really build our foundations. And right now, that foundation is starting to be pulled away,” McCarthy told Gizmodo.
Young graduates could be a “lost generation”
It’s a particularly bad time to be an unemployed 20-something right now.
The New York Fed released a report in April saying that the labor market for recent college graduates between the ages of 22 and 27 had “deteriorated noticeably in the first quarter of 2025,” with an unemployment rate at its highest since the pandemic. And the gap in unemployment rates between recent graduates and all workers is at its widest since 1990.
Some of that has to do with broader market level trends, the end of a post-covid hiring boom, and a softening economy, but AI is still a significant factor. Generative AI is particularly good at basic tasks, one that a recent graduate might be expected to complete as an entry-level worker.
“Evidence for AI’s negative impact on early careers is already strong, and I worry that the current generational squeeze might evolve into a permanent reconfiguration of early career paths,” McCarthy said.
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