The disappearing first job and what it means for your business

Young job hunters might have been alarmed by a stark warning from the Mayor of London at the start of the year that artificial intelligence threatens to wipe out large numbers of jobs and bring in “a new era of mass unemployment”.

Sadiq Khan, delivering the mayor’s annual Mansion House speech in January, predicted that existing roles would disappear faster than new ones were created, with entry-level jobs the first to go.

His warning – aimed primarily at the capital with its reliance on white-collar work, finance, professional services and the creative industries, but applicable across the whole country – comes as opportunities for jobseekers dry up.

Vacancies have fallen over the past six months and by the end of 2025, there were 15 per cent fewer unfilled positions than at the end of 2024. According to the jobs site Adzuna, there are now roughly 2.3 job seekers for every advertised role, the highest level since the 2021 lockdowns.

Young people trying to find their first job face the biggest challenge, as entry-level roles are those most under threat from these changes. But businesses are also at risk: the disappearance of junior jobs is undermining how they grow, innovate and renew.

For employers, this is not simply a question of youth unemployment, but of how they can recruit the talented staff of tomorrow who will help lead them to future success.

Embarking on a career was a different picture 60 years ago, when most young people left education at 16 and found work locally, often in manual labour or administrative work. In the 1980s, with the hollowing out of Britain’s manufacturing industry under Margaret Thatcher, many of those early employment opportunities disappeared.

The internet revolution that began this century has arguably given today’s generation of young people more opportunities than their parents had – but now we could be facing a modern-day hollowing out of roles deemed fit for automation.

Entry-level job postings declined by almost a third between November 2022 and mid-2025, according to Adzuna. While remote working has widened access to work, competition for junior roles has increased.

Mid-size companies can be harder hit than others by the knock-on effects. When junior roles disappear, it is not just an employment issue – it becomes a leadership and succession risk. “This diminished pipeline creates a real risk for the company’s resilience and ability to continue growing,” says Cara Myers, a consultant at Argon & Co.

This affects mid-sized businesses more, she explains, because they often operate with leaner structures, meaning there are fewer resources if there is a lack of available talent internally.

“Middle managers are often hit hard, having to absorb more work because there aren’t junior team members to delegate work to,” Myers says. “This can result in managers being overstretched, which can lead to burnout, disengagement, and even attrition, which compounds the problem.”

Entry-level roles are also what often help young people develop the critical thinking skills needed for higher-level opportunities. Without them, Myers warns, there will be a skills gap that impacts both businesses and employees. The chicken-and-egg nature of recruitment can make it harder for young people to get a foot on the ladder.

Companies want them to have experience – but they don’t always offer entry-level roles that would allow them to gain that experience. It creates a system where potential exists, but pathways up the ladder do not. For many businesses, apprenticeships remain one of the few scalable ways to rebuild those pathways without inflating costs or narrowing access.

Twenty-five-year-old Artemis Webster is nearing the end of a two-year engineering and technology graduate scheme at Rolls-Royce, which she feels has significantly boosted her career prospects. Getting there was far from straightforward: she experienced homelessness, time in care and rejection from four universities.

“What you hear about people having spreadsheets of hundreds of roles and not getting any is completely true,” says Webster. “Just having a degree doesn’t feel like enough anymore. At university, I saw that the earlier you’re able to get that professional work experience, the better.”

It is also becoming significantly tougher for graduates to get noticed. According to the Institute of Student Employers, at the start of the century, employers received an average of 38 applications per graduate vacancy. This had more than doubled to 86 in 2022-23 and for the past two years has averaged 140.

Of course, making blanket applications is no substitute for trying first to narrow down what you want to do – and then applying for fewer posts, but ones that you might stand a better chance of getting.

Webster put herself in a better position by applying for internships before she even looked for graduate roles. Now she is reaping the benefits of her approach. Already, at Rolls-Royce, she has gained experience in a variety of areas that will put her in good stead for a future career in software engineering: for example, researching quantum computing, using coding language Python and building full-stack web applications.

“Getting that first foot in the door is the most important step,” she says. “Young people are able to bring new perspectives, they are keen to learn because they are at the start of their careers, and they are looking for that first opportunity to get them somewhere.”

Businesses, too, stand to benefit from having a steady influx of fresh young talent – without junior roles, they face severe operational and strategic ramifications, says Myers.

“Businesses would lose their ability to develop proven, home-grown future leaders who have strong cultural alignments and deep organisational knowledge,” she says. “This would destroy internal talent pipelines, resulting in considerable succession planning challenges.”

It also forces businesses to rely more heavily on external hiring. “A lack of internal talent pipeline forces businesses to rely on hiring external talent, which leaves roles open for longer while trying to find the right person, and increases business costs through recruitment,” she adds.

Apprenticeships, in contrast, offer businesses a way to grow leadership capability internally while widening access to opportunity beyond traditional graduate routes.

Some employers are taking action. Sainsbury’s launched a new graduate programme at the start of 2026. Successful applicants will be given the opportunity to embark on a two-year rotation, developing critical skills in areas including AI, data and analytics, change and transformation and business decision-making.

The Japanese multinational Ricoh is also tackling the issue. It has been working with The Prince’s Trust on a youth employability programme for more than five years, offering work placements and workshops in areas including mentoring, interview skills and CV writing. So far, it has employed eight staff members from the scheme.

Meanwhile, politicians are seeking to address the threats of AI. During his Mansion House speech, Sadiq Khan announced that he would launch a task force made up of experts from the government, the skills sector and the AI industry to review the situation. Its findings are due in the summer, with Khan also saying his office would commission free AI training for all Londoners. “We have a moral, social and economic duty to act,” he said.

It is also reassuring that a human touch remains vital to some industries. Health and social care, law and hospitality rely on skills that AI cannot replicate. Ana Ciubotaru, chief operating officer at online pharmacy company Pharmacy2U, says: “Right now, I find it difficult to see how AI could truly replace the level of empathy and human understanding required when working in a healthcare setting.”

Rather than eliminating junior roles, Ciubotaru believes AI can change what those roles are for. For her business, it should free junior staff to focus more on patient care, keep up with industry changes and work on ideas to improve the workplace.

A similar approach is emerging in the legal sector. At IMD solicitors, for example, managing partner and co-founder Marcin Durlak has been making a conscious effort to reshape junior roles to ensure AI doesn’t replace them. Primarily, the technology is being used to remove what he considers to be low-value tasks, such as notetaking in meetings, so that junior staff can spend more time listening, observing and learning on the job.

“By removing repetitive administrative tasks, juniors can progress faster into analysis, client interaction and responsibility,” he explains. “In practice, that means juniors are developing skills earlier than they might have in a traditional model. The learning value of being in the room has actually increased.”

However, young people are understandably concerned about the impact of AI on their career prospects. If AI tools are being used to outsource core critical thinking skills – for example, writing, structuring and understanding complex information – how are those skills learnt at all?

Webster says her current rotation at Rolls-Royce has given her the opportunity to learn a variety of different things and given her space to grow. But she would certainly be worried if she were a graduate looking for opportunities today. “I think AI will probably lead to a decline in roles, which is scary because it’s already hard enough,” she says.

The government announced plans last February to simplify requirements for apprenticeships and help up to 10,000 more apprentices qualify every year, particularly in SME-dominated growth sectors such as construction.

While SMEs make up more than 99 per cent of UK businesses, they employ just 37 per cent of apprentices, meaning they are not meeting their employment potential and are missing out on opportunities to innovate.

Alongside building future talent pipelines, apprenticeships are a cost-effective way to increase diversity and bring fresh ideas into a business, says Myers: “All things that boost innovation also enable agility and create long-term business sustainability. These roles also provide the opportunity for early-career talent to learn core skills.”

Rotational schemes offer apprentices opportunities to work across multiple teams and functions to help them gain a strong understanding of how a business operates and how functions integrate with each other.

“Understanding the business from the ground up in this way future-proofs the organisation because it creates a rich, home-grown leadership pipeline of proven talent that already has a deep understanding of the customers, systems and culture,” says Myers. “This type of knowledge can’t be replicated when hiring externally. It would take a new hire years to build this.”

Some companies have already fine-tuned hiring junior staff to support sustainable growth. As Bristol-based agricultural-tech company LettUs Grow has scaled, co-founder and chief technology officer Ben Crowther says it has been beneficial to bring in entry-level recruits to support middle management. Providing entry-level opportunities has also proved to be a cost-effective way to innovate without diverting resources away from revenue-making parts of the business.

“There are some things that you can prototype without needing deep domain expertise,” says Crowther. “That’s where grads and apprentices are great because you can give them a bit of guidance and they can go off and explore, without any of the baggage that 10 or 20 years in the industry might give you. It can make things a little less efficient, but it can also give you some really good stuff.”

While AI appears to be reducing job opportunities, the trend may yet reverse as its shortcomings are revealed. Some businesses have already gone back on their decisions to use machines instead of people. According to consultancy Forrester’s report Predictions 2026: The Future of Work, more than half of employers regret AI-related layoffs.

What this suggests is not that AI eliminates the need for junior jobs – but that it exposes the long-term costs of removing them. If they were to disappear, so too would the energy of youth: new ideas, diverse thinking and the opportunity for the future workforce to grow and flourish. And businesses would feel the detrimental impact of those lost opportunities, too.

“If I were an employer, I would be focusing on getting young people to use [AI] more efficiently, rather than completely replacing them,” says Webster. “Because I feel like you still need humans in the loop.”