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Last year, research predicted that AI could affect over 1 million jobs in London. Unemployment is at its highest level since 2021, and graduate vacancies have reportedly fallen by a third as employers adopt new automated tools. What are Gen Z supposed to do?
New data suggests that AI is continuing to impact job markets around the world, with Gen Z entry roles taking a particularly hard hit.
According to the latest numbers from jobs platform Adzuna, there has been a near 35% decline in graduate vacancies this year, with overall UK listings at their lowest level ‘since the pandemic.’ Goldman Sachs has noted that AI could soon affect programmers, accountants, and legal assistants, too. Put plainly, it’s getting more difficult to find a footing on the corporate ladder, despite degrees, relevant experience, and a good social network.
The adoption of AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok is largely to blame for a shifting job market, which has seen many entry-level roles in administration, copywriting, and design take a sizeable hit. Smaller companies are no longer outsourcing simple tasks to human workers; instead, they’re running them through language models and generating near-instant results, negating the need for an employee or an additional salary.
It makes sense: AI is cheaper, easier, instant, and can be fine-tuned almost infinitely.
Tools like ChatGPT can give smaller budget projects a very real boost, and are allowing tiny businesses to thrive at a fraction of the cost. Take start-up company Medvi, for example, a telehealth provider that is predicted to make nearly $2 billion USD in sales this year with only two human employees. Its founder, Matthew Gallagher, credits AI and coding for his success. Automated software takes care of his admin and tedious busywork, leaving his profit margins wider and workflows more streamlined. It’s hard to argue with.
Yet, all that convenience and ease isn’t enough to shake the distrust and disillusionment that appear to be steadily growing amongst Gen Z and millennials. Research shows that despite becoming ever more reliant on ChatGPT, students and younger workers are feeling less hopeful about AI and its future. They’re more anxious about its impact on job markets and critical thinking skills compared to a year ago, and excitement toward AI dropped from 36% to 22% in 2026, according to analytics firm Gallup.
Last spring, we explored how AI could impact Gen Z, as they balance convenience with potential corporate redundancy. Things have changed massively in the last twelve months, and we’ve seen more governments attempt to put together rules and transparency agreements that regulate AI use to some degree.
It’s fair to say that most of these efforts have been unsuccessful. 97% of Gen Z students use AI to help them with essay writing and research, with no tangible way to evaluate where and how it’s been incorporated into final submissions. Even though Grok faced legal trouble in the UK earlier this year, the tool is still usable on X and has opened the floodgates to a ton of automated images and misinformation. Creatives have rallied and protested against the theft of their intellectual property, yet you can still use ChatGPT to generate content based on well-known franchises and brands with ease.
So, what are Gen Z supposed to do? They’re all using AI on a daily basis, while also trying to outpace it as they venture into the corporate world. We’re all steadily becoming reliant on tools that are threatening to upend many industries, self-fulfilling the AI dominance prophecy, and leaving young people in a difficult position. Things were already competitive enough before automation arrived. Learning how to adapt and evolve alongside it will be a staple to success in the coming years, but understanding how to actually do that is difficult – at least at this stage.
Perhaps we can learn lessons from history. Every new technological breakthrough has been met with some resistance by the old guard, including the emergence of the internet, the adoption of the telephone, and even the first commercial cameras. Each one was exciting but equally as intimidating, leaving many old, manual processes a thing of the past. AI is following a similar trajectory, but at a quicker, more widespread scale, and the reality is that Gen Z will have to modify their perception of work to fit the new world, or risk falling behind. Certain tasks are becoming automated by default, and skills might need to be shuffled if young people want to attract employers.
By that same token, having real, quantifiable, human skills will become more valuable as AI takes over creative spaces. Jobs that involve branding, storytelling, or community engagement can lean heavily into this niche and (hopefully) thrive against a backdrop of automation and directionless slop content. Tweaks and reinventions like this will become increasingly paramount as Gen Z enters a transforming workforce, and many will have to push through their anxieties in order to become employable for jobs that don’t even exist yet.
Adapting and adopting will be a necessity for many, though human work will still remain valuable in the right spaces.
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