The Missing Rung

Entry-level job postings are down 35% in eighteen months. Unemployment for recent college grads just hit one of the highest levels in over a decade. And every executive says the same thing: “AI does what our juniors used to do.” Fine. Then answer one question — in ten years, who’s running your company? 

This week I dig into the quiet collapse of the bottom rung of the career ladder, and why I think cutting junior hiring is the most expensive tech debt companies will ever take on. The entry-level job was never really about the work — the work was the tuition. AI took the tasks, but it didn’t take over the learning function those tasks were secretly carrying. Meanwhile, JLL’s brand-new Future of Work survey (2,200+ C-suite leaders, 21 countries) shows the most AI-advanced organizations doing the exact opposite of everyone else: growing headcount, investing in entry-level talent, and reporting — for the first time in fifteen years of that research — that their #1 constraint isn’t money. It’s future-ready talent. 

Then I get practical: four plays you can start Monday morning — redesign junior roles around AI supervision, compress the ladder into a deliberate 18-month apprenticeship, hire for learning velocity instead of tool checklists, and measure pipeline health like a supply chain. Build the
ladder. Somebody built yours. 

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