Artificial intelligence is not the only reason why the U.S. job market is experiencing one of its toughest stretches since the pandemic. However, higher education leaders believe students must receive training now to prepare for greater disruption ahead.
This article is part one in a two-part series focused on student AI readiness. Subscribe to our newsletter to access part two, available tomorrow.
Media reports on AI’s role in corporate layoffs and a tighter entry-level labor market have exacerbated students’ frustration with finding jobs. At this spring’s commencement ceremonies, graduates jeered keynote speakers who celebrated automation and the “next industrial revolution.”
“Graduating students, not only at Gettysburg, are struggling more than they have in recent memory to find jobs and to find places in grad school,” says Richard Russell, director of the Artificial Intelligence Initiative at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania.
However, today’s job market has as much to do with the traditional boom and bust of the business hiring cycle, he adds. “AI is given as a cover for job reductions because it’s a better story to connect them to AI’s efficiency gains rather than other factors.”
New data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis suggests that the decline in hiring for young workers is a consequence of an overall contraction in job openings. “Hiring slowdowns show up first and most clearly among young and inexperienced workers,” the report reads.
But rising demands for AI-related jobs are causing some disruption, especially for young workers. From April 2023 to December 2025, the growing demand for AI skills in jobs accounted for about 45% of the drop in employment among workers ages 18-24 and one-third of rising unemployment.
While AI is not eliminating jobs economy-wide, the report concludes that emerging job expectations are raising the skill requirements for recent college graduates.
This extends to non-technical roles as well. Some leaders believe AI’s early impact on computer science careers could be the canary in the coal mine for broader disruption in law, medicine and other industries.
Colleges must keep pace to prepare students for this new reality. “Resisting this reality in the classroom is like resisting gravity,” Jameson Watts, dean of the School of Computing and Information Sciences at Willamette University, said in an email.