Behind the Curtain: The kids aren't AI-right
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America, we have a problem: Young adults are scared and unprepared for the AI revolution upending their early career choices and prospects.
- They tell pollsters they're frightened, even angry, about AI's fast arrival. They're rightly unnerved by a tough job market for college grads. And most aren't remotely equipped by schools to be AI-savvy.
Why it matters: This is a growing problem for just about everyone — kids, educators, employers and politicians.
- The youngest, most technologically native age group should be among the biggest cheerleaders and beneficiaries of AI. They aren't. If anything, their feelings are growing more sour.
By the numbers: Gen Z's excitement about AI dropped 14 points over the last year to just 22%, according to Gallup polling released last week. Hopefulness about the technology fell nine points to 18%, while anger rose nine points to 31%.
- You can't blame that trend on the AI-averse. Daily AI users among the cohort saw even bigger drops in sentiment, with excitement falling 18 points and hopefulness tumbling 11 points.
The school failure is real. More than half of college students surveyed in another Gallup poll this month say their school either discourages (42%) or outright bans (11%) AI use.
- Educators know this is happening. 63% of faculty think their schools' 2025 graduates were not very or not at all prepared to use AI at work, per an American Association of Colleges and Universities survey.
- Some students are trying to outsmart the times. 16% of currently enrolled college students changed their major due to AI, Gallup found.
- There are efforts to address the issue. Khan Academy, the TED conference and testing giant ETS announced this week that they're spinning up a $10,000 interactive online program that aims to train students for AI-era jobs.
The job market isn't helping. The most recent data from the Fed pegged the unemployment rate for recent grads at 5.7% in Q4 2025. That's above the national rate, which almost never happens. Underemployment for recent grads is at 42.5%, the highest since 2020.
- AI is at play here, too. At companies that adopted AI, junior hiring fell nearly 8% within six quarters — not via layoffs, but through a quiet freeze on new positions, per a Harvard working paper tracking 62 million workers.
Between the lines: The cruelest part of this shift is structural. Entry-level jobs are likely the ones AI will automate first — and they're what teach young workers to think, build judgment and ultimately move up.
- If a company's bottom rungs are empty, it's hollowing out its own management pipeline years down the road.
- A bright spot: IBM announced earlier this year that it's tripling entry-level hiring, predicting that the rush toward AI will fundamentally expand what the newest workers do.
The other side: There's a counterargument that the tepid job market for the youngest workers isn't solely due to AI. Some prominent economists see it as an overcorrection from the post-COVID hiring binge in 2021.
- Almost 60% of hiring managers use AI as an excuse for layoffs or hiring freezes because it plays better with stakeholders, per a Resume.org survey.
- Marc Andreessen called AI a "silver-bullet excuse" for layoffs last month. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said it was "the lazy way out." OpenAI CEO Sam Altman branded it "AI-washing."
- The honest, less sexy answer is that it's probably both: Layoffs and hiring freezes are real and targeting younger workers, while AI solidifies changes in the workforce that are already underway.
Here are three things you can do to help young people in your life tackle this shift in the most clear-eyed way:
- Get them using AI — now. It's a vital tool for every job at every level. Encourage them to pay $20 per month for Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini. Share Jim's letter to his kids as one possible road map. But don't just take our word for it: YouTube is loaded with free how-to videos.
- Lobby schools to teach basic AI ethics and techniques. It's fine for teachers to ban AI use for a specific class. But it's nuts not to equip students with the workplace skills of the future.
- Encourage AI awareness. This technology touches every part of work and life, in potentially great and scary ways. Don't repeat the mistakes of the phone-and-internet era. Get everyone you know to think about the ethics, healthy use and societal implications before it captures their minds and habits like their phone did.
The bottom line: The generation best positioned to thrive in an AI world is the most frightened of it — because the people who should be teaching them aren't, and the companies that should be hiring them won't.
- Axios' Shane Savitsky contributed.
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