Business

As AI cuts entry-level jobs, young workers are left wondering what’s next

Published

4 months ago

September 4, 2025

Welcome to Eye on AI! In this edition...entry-level job loss due to AI breeds uncertainty…OpenAI acquires Statsig for $1.1 billion – and one of its top executives changes roles…French AI startup Mistral is reportedly finalizing new funding round at $14 billion valuation…is Amazon getting into the AI agent game?

Life has always been uncertain, but for generations, young college grads could count on one thing: an entry-level job. It wasn’t glamorous—maybe you fetched coffee, made photocopies, or slogged through low-level tasks for little pay—but it gave you a foothold, the first rung of whatever ladder you hoped to climb.

Now there are signs that, in some industries, that “sure thing” is slipping away. A new paper from Stanford University’s Digital Economy Lab drew wide attention last week: it found that since late 2022, early-career workers aged 22 to 25 in jobs most exposed to AI automation—like software development and customer service—have seen steep relative declines in employment. The researchers tested other possible explanations, from pandemic-related education setbacks to economy-wide factors like rising interest rates, but concluded that the rise of generative AI was the most likely driver, while noting more data is needed to prove a direct causal link.

There is also a new Harvard study which also found that the release of ChatGPT in November 2022 marked a turning point in the labor market From 2015 through mid-2022, hiring was on the rise for both junior and senior roles. But beginning in 2022, entry-level employment stalled and then slipped into decline. According to the study, headcount for early-career roles at AI-adopting firms has fallen 7.7% over six quarters since early 2023. The study also found that senior staff, were largely spared. Employment for more experienced workers has continued its steady climb since 2015, avoiding the downturn hitting their younger colleagues.

A third study, carried out by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, did not look at whether younger and older workers were affected differently, but it did examine the link between occupations that had adopted AI most intensively and job losses and found a distinct correlation. The impacts were greatest in occupations that used mathematics and computing intensively, such as software development, and much less in blue collar work and fields such as healthcare that were less prone to being automated with AI.

As my colleague Jeremy Kahn said in Tuesday’s Eye on AI, none of these studies disentangle the effects of AI from the possible effects of the unwinding of the tech hiring boom that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, he explained, “many large companies bulked up their software development and IT departments. Major tech firms such as Google, Meta, and Microsoft hired tens of thousands of new employees, sometimes hiring people before there was even any work for them to do just in order to prevent rivals from snapping up the same coders. Then, when the pandemic ended and it was clear that some ideas, such as Meta’s pivot to the metaverse, were not going to pan out, these same companies laid off tens of thousands of workers.”

Whatever the reasons, the prospect of post-college unemployment is an uncomfortable place to be—especially for students who thought they could count on steady pipelines into fields like IT or consulting. PwC, for instance, says it plans to recruit a third fewer grads by 2028. Uncertainty, in turn, tends to spread, breeding anxiety—which explains surveys like a recent one that found that 60% said they felt pessimistic about their career prospects.

Some may tell young people to pivot, persist, or simply pray. But we can’t afford complacency. Society will need these workers one way or another, and that means building real pathways into today’s jobs—and tomorrow’s. What’s happening on the ground to guarantee young people are both prepared for—and included in—the future of work? Opportunity has to exist, even in the face of uncertainty.

With that, here’s the rest of the AI news.

Sharon Goldman
sharon.goldman@fortune.com
@sharongoldman

FORTUNE ON AI

The Google antitrust ruling gives its AI rivals one big reason to cheer — by Jeremy Kahn

Figma is getting crushed in its post-IPO earnings debut; CEO Dylan Field is focused on AI’s long term power to ‘raise the ceiling’ — by Allie Garfinkle

Is an ‘AI winter’ coming? Here’s what investors and leaders can learn from past AI slumps – by Jeremy Kahn

The new thing on campus: Why universities are appointing their first chief AI officers – by John Kell

AI IN THE NEWS

OpenAI acquires Statsig for $1.1 billion – plus executive moves. OpenAI has snapped up product development startup Statsig in a $1.1 billion deal, according to CNBC—the latest move in its acquisition streak following the purchase of Jony Ive’s hardware venture, io. As part of the deal, Statsig CEO Vijaye Raji will join OpenAI as chief technologist for its applications unit, reporting to Fidji Simo, the former Instacart CEO appointed in May to lead OpenAI’s applications business. In addition, OpenAI’s chief product officer, Kevin Weil, announced in a post on LinkedIn that he will become VP of a new group called OpenAI for Science, “to build the next great scientific instrument: an AI-powered platform that accelerates scientific discovery.” Weil said he will work closely with Sebastien Bubeck, an OpenAI researcher and the former VP of AI and Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft.

French AI startup Mistral reportedly finalizing new funding round at $14 billion valuation. Bloomberg reported that Mistral, the French AI startup founded by former Meta and DeepMind researchers, is finalizing a new funding round that will value the company at $14 billion. Mistral, an OpenAI rival, develops open-source language models, a chatbot tailored to European users called Le Chat, and other AI services for enterprise companies. In March, I interviewed CEO Arthur Mensch, who denied reports the Paris-based startup is planning an IPO but highlighted its growth and a renewed focus on open-source AI to compete with China’s DeepSeek. Many argue Mistral is benefitting from not just the capabilities of its models, but also from geopolitical tailwinds. European countries, and France in particular, are increasingly talking about the need for “sovereign AI” that would enable them to escape dependency on U.S. or Chinese AI systems.

Is Amazon getting into the AI agent game? Amazon, which far better known for its AWS cloud computing division than for big moves in enterprise software, is testing new agentic, AI-powered workspace software called Quick Suite, according to internal documents viewed by Business Insider. Quick Suite empowers “every business user to make better decisions, faster, and act on them swiftly by unifying Al agents for business insights, deep research, and automation into a single experience,” said one of the confidential documents. According to the reporting, several companies have been given a private preview of the new technology, and Amazon recently sent out invitations for an internal beta test, which said: “With over 40% of business users expected to adopt Al-enhanced work environments soon, AWS is positioned to lead this shift by providing integrated solutions that help organizations — including our own — effectively deploy and scale Al agents in the workplace.”

AI CALENDAR

Sept. 8-10: Fortune Brainstorm Tech, Park City, Utah. Apply to attend here.

Oct. 6-10: World AI Week, Amsterdam

Oct. 21-22: TedAI San Francisco. Apply to attend here.

Dec. 2-7: NeurIPS, San Diego

Dec. 8-9: Fortune Brainstorm AI San Francisco. Apply to attend here.

EYE ON AI NUMBERS

30%

That’s the share of workers who say they’re comfortable with AI acting as their boss, according to recent research from enterprise software company Workday.

While 75% of employees say they’re fine teaming up with AI agents, only 30% draw the line at being managed by one. The survey highlights a clear tension: adoption is surging—82% of organizations are expanding their use of AI agents—but trust remains uneven.

“We’re entering a new era of work where AI can be an incredible partner, and a complement to human judgement, leadership, and empathy,” said Kathy Pham, vice president of AI at Workday. “Building trust means being intentional in how AI is used and keeping people at the center of every decision.”

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Business

Stocks: ‘Dedollarization’ is dead—investors discount Trump’s drama as they pile into U.S. assets

Published

19 minutes ago

January 16, 2026

Jace Porter

There is a conflict between Wall Street analysts right now over the right strategy for dealing with U.S. dollar-denominated assets. Some, like Pimco chief investment officer Dan Ivascyn, have recommended investors diversify out of U.S. equities because the Trump administration is so unpredictable. And analysts at ING have been pushing a “sell America” argument for a while now, noting that the 9% decline in the value of the dollar over the last 12 months has imposed a harsh haircut on anyone who bought U.S. assets in that period.

But yesterday we got some data showing that the tide may be turning against the “sell America” crowd.

First, the S&P 500 ticked up 0.26% yesterday and futures were up 0.36% this morning. One day’s trading is not significant on its own, of course. But it means that the S&P is up 1.45% year to date—a pretty decent pace of growth over such a short stretch.

More significantly, The U.S. government released its most recent numbers for Treasury International Capital Data (covering November) and they revealed that net foreign inflows into U.S. assets of all kinds were $212 billion.

That’s a lot, according to ING’s Chris Turner.

“The main takeaway is that foreigners continue to pour money into U.S. asset markets. The TIC release is a volatile data set, but looking at the rolling 12-month average, in November the net foreign purchase of US assets was around $100 billion per month – compared to around $25 billion in the summer of 2024,” he told clients this morning.

Cathie Wood adjusts her ‘rolling recession’ theory

There are several other factors giving traders good vibes about the U.S.

Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood announced in a new commentary that her “rolling recession” theory (that various sectors of the economy have suffered recessions even though the economy as a whole has held up) may be coming to an end. The U.S. “has evolved into a coiled spring that could bounce back powerfully during the next few years,” she said.

Wood is an idiosyncratic investor but she has a fervent fanbase buoyed by the performance of her ARK Innovation ETF, which is up 45% over the last 12 months, per Yahoo Finance:

Tech bulls are enthusiastic about Q4 earnings

Her bullishness looks tepid compared to Wedbush’s Dan Ives, who told clients to ignore all the people who have hating on tech stocks recently.

“We believe tech stocks will have a very strong 4Q earnings season led by Big Tech as the cloud stalwarts Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon had very robust AI enterprise demand in the quarter based on our field checks,” he said. “We believe … the Street is still underestimating how big this AI spending trajectory is and we expect 4Q tech earnings to be another validation moment with a doubling down on aggressive initial cap-ex numbers into 2026. Our bullish view is that investors are still not fully appreciating the tidal wave of growth on the horizon from the $3 trillion of spending over the next 3 years coming from enterprise and government.”

There’s a price gauge showing he may be right: The price of copper is up 33% over the last 12 months (based on the Comex continuous contract). President Trump’s copper tariffs didn’t help, of course, but the underlying issue is that tech companies building AI data centers need as much copper as they can get—so the copper price looks like an indicator of robust tech activity.

Trump: much smoke, less fire

Lastly, investors are becoming inured to Trump’s political dramas as they learn that much smoke often means little fire. Trump may have apprehended Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro but he left the remainder of his regime in place. He may have threatened to bomb Iran again, but then he didn’t. His administration may be criminally investigating U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, but after Powell came out against him with guns blazing in a video on Sunday Wall Street was reassured that Fed independence wasn’t going away in the short term. Even Trump’s threat to invade Greenland looks like it might end up in the Pentagon’s “Easier said than done” file.

‘De-dollarisation is going to take some time’

ING’s Turner isn’t giving up on his theory that the world is slowly moving away from the dollar, yet. But his note this morning admitted that the greenback isn’t dead yet. The dollar has gained nearly a full percentage point in value on the DXY index of foreign currencies since the start of the year.

“The dollar is drifting higher this week on probably what is best described as a macro move. U.S. data has come in on the firmer side, e.g. retail sales and jobless claims, while the Fed’s Beige Book presented a view of a gently expanding economy and no immediate threat to the jobs market,” he told clients.

“We would again conclude that de-dollarisation is going to take some time and that if the dollar is to come lower this year, it will be driven by lower U.S. [interest] rates and increased foreign hedging of U.S. assets.”

Here’s a snapshot of the markets ahead of the opening bell in New York this morning:

S&P 500 futures were up 0.36% this morning. The last session closed up 0.26%.
STOXX Europe 600 was flat in early trading.
The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was flat in early trading.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.32%.
China’s CSI 300 was down 0.41%.
The South Korea KOSPI was up 0.9%.
India’s NIFTY 50 was up 0.16%.
Bitcoin was down to $95.5K.

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Business

Jamie Dimon says his success is down to ‘details, no bullsh**ting, or meetings after meetings’

Published

50 minutes ago

January 16, 2026

Jace Porter

Jamie Dimon’s ethos on running a company is pretty simple: Be relentless, and don’t overlook the details. When organizations get too comfortable and begin ignoring the fine print, he said, is when complacency sets in, and a business begins to decay.

With more than 300,000 employees worldwide, the CEO of America’s largest bank can’t be across every issue in the company—which is why he believes this diligence needs to be instilled at every level.

Speaking at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce yesterday, Dimon was asked how he had made JP better than “every other bank in the world,” a take which its CEO immediately disagreed with: “a lot of people do things better,” he began.

That reflection is “one of the reasons we sometimes do better a little bit,” Dimon added, explaining: “I’m relentless: Details, facts, analysis, no bulllshitting, no meetings after meetings, share all the information—put it on the table, put the dead cats on the table—go through system by system by system, get out on the road, visit other companies, they all do things better than you.”

The overall message is to “learn, learn, learn”, a mantra the Wall Street veteran has advised for everyone from Gen Z’s entering the job market to those in leadership.

“Big companies slow down, they become complacent, they become bureaucratic … arrogant,” Dimon added, all of which eventually leads to “stasis and death.” “Huge, wonderful companies” have failed because of this pitfall, Dimon said, and as such “nothing is too small to care about.”

Watchers of the 69-year-old’s career will not be surprised by his energetic leadership advice. Last April, Dimon wrote in his letter to shareholders that he runs the bank with a military tactic in mind named the ‘OODA loop,’ which stands for observe, orient, decide, act.

JP without Jamie

Under Dimon’s stewardship, JP has scored many wins: Its share price is up 21% over the past year, it is continually leading in AI adoption according to Evident AI’s barometer, and its CEO has the ear of everyone from lawmakers to President Trump.

However, Dimon shocked investors last year when he changed his oft-repeated response to the question of when he may be leaving the top job at JPMorgan Chase. For many years, Dimon would joke that his retirement was five years away. In May last year, that changed. “It’s not five years anymore,” he said.

Speculation has since been rife about which of JPM’s executive team would step in to fill the significant shoes of Dimon. But this week the executive’s tone changed again.

When a “five more years” anecdote was repeated back to Dimon this week, the CEO responded “at least,” suggesting his departure is anything but imminent. “I love what I do, it’s up to the board how long I do it,” he added.

Dimon’s success at JPM, which has included handling politicians and policymakers, led many to question whether one day he might make a move to Capitol Hill. The bank executive completely shut down the notion of a presidential run, as well as the role of Fed chairman (which will be vacated by Jerome Powell this spring).

“Fed chairman, I’d put in the absolutely, positively, no way, no chance, no way, no how for any reason,” Dimon doubled down this week. Since Trump’s return to the White House, the role of Fed chairman has become significantly less attractive, acting as a target for the Oval Office to level criticism and lobbying for the base rate to move one way or another.

But Treasury Secretary Dimon would “consider,” he added: “If a president calls you up asks you to do something, you should consider it. So I would take the call, consider it, and think about why and what they want, but what they want and how they want to operate would be important to me.

“I like my job, I’ve been my own boss for pretty much 25 years, and I like it that way.”

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Business

AI is baked into health care. Now CEOs are focusing on patient and staff outcomes

Published

1 hour ago

January 16, 2026

Jace Porter

Good morning. What is the state of U.S. business? It depends on where you are and what you do. I was in San Francisco earlier this week, debating the AI dividend with a dozen CEOs of major hospital systems at a dinner sponsored by Philips. If you’re Suresh Gunasekaran of UCSF Health, which consistently ranks among the world’s best in health outcomes and medical research, AI is becoming baked into a more seamless patient experience. “Being a medical student, a pharmacy student, a nurse is no longer the same in the age of AI,” Gunasekaran said.

For Providence CEO Erik Wexler, who faces staff shortages, rising costs and reduced Medicaid payments in 51 hospitals and 1,000 clinics spread across seven states with different regulatory environments, AI is perhaps less ubiquitous but equally powerful. The reaction to ambient technology that acts on insights gleaned from doctor-patient conversations? “This is life-changing technology,” Wexler told me. “When a physician says that, you feel like you’ve discovered plutonium.”

While many Americans may fear the impact of AI on their jobs, many welcome the prospect of it lowering their average $17,000 tab for health care, which is expected to account for almost 19% of U.S. GDP this year.

Americans’ struggle with affordability and access to health care are two persistent problems U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Suzanne P. Clark cited in her 2026 State of American Business remarks yesterday in an otherwise upbeat speech. She drew comparisons between this 250^th anniversary year and the last time America had a big birthday in 1976. Along with fond memories of waving a little flag in the Englewood, Ohio bicentennial parade, she recalled a dour mood shaped by 5.7% inflation, 7.7% unemployment, soaring energy costs, rising crime, stagnating productivity and a “ballooning regulatory state”—not to mention fear of nuclear annihilation amid the Cold War.

Fast forward to today, she said, and there’s been a threefold increase in GDP, a homegrown energy revolution, a 40% rise in median household income and of course several waves of transformative technologies. The lesson for Clark? “Despite all of our challenges, we live in an era of abundance and advancement,” she said. “America is very good at getting better.”

In the AI age, the question for business leaders is how to accelerate adoption and transformation while keeping costs in check. 2026 may be the year where the focus shifts to outcomes. As Jeff DiLullo, chief region leader of Philips North America, advised health systems leaders at our dinner: “AI either has to increase access to care, increase the quality and the outcomes, or reduce staff burden. And if it can’t do those things, don’t do it.”

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

Top news

Questions for the next Fed chair

The DOJ’s criminal probe into Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell has delayed the search for his successor by raising questions about the independence of the next chair and whether they’ll win Senate confirmation. Two Republican Senators have vowed to withhold any vote until the investigation is resolved. One person who will “absolutely, positively” not take the job is JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, an often-rumored candidate. What about running the Treasury? “I would take the call,” he said in a new interview.

Ashley St. Clair sues xAI

The conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair, who had a child with Elon Musk, has sued his xAI firm in New York, seeking a restraining order to keep the chatbot Grok from undressing images of her. xAI has not commented on the filing, but has sued St. Clair in Texas for allegedly violating its terms with her lawsuit.

Trump targets power plants

The Trump administration is reportedly considering a plan to have tech companies bid on building new power plants in an effort to lower electricity prices for average Americans, who are starting to push back against data centers. The president has praised Microsoft for announcing that it will pay higher utility bills for its U.S. data centers.

Gov. Newsom comes out against billionaire’s tax

California Governor Gavin Newsom has joined a list of business leaders in opposing a billionaire tax for the state that will be voted on in November. He describes it as “bad business,” creating a split in the Democratic Party between him and New York City Mayor Zohran Momdani’s “tax the rich” sentiment.

Oracle struggles to bring employees to new HQ

Oracle is struggling to bring employees to its “world headquarters” in Nashville despite investing over a billion dollars in the office and offering various amenities. Most employees are reportedly hesitant to move simply because of salary ceilings in the state.

Tesla’s self-driving subscription model draws criticism

Tesla customers are speaking out on social media after CEO Elon Musk announced that the company’s self-driving technology will only be available through a monthly subscription after Feb. 14. The technology is currently available for a flat $8,000 fee, or $99 a month. “You will own nothing and be happy,” one X user posted.

The markets

S&P 500 futures were up 0.28% this morning. The last session closed up 0.26%. STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.08% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up o.02% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.32%. China’s CSI 300 was up o.41%. The South Korea KOSPI was up 0.90%. India’s NIFTY 50 was up 0.11%. Bitcoin was at $95K.