For the first time in years, recent college graduates are more likely to be out of work than the average American. As of March 2026, the unemployment rate for young professionals was 5.6 percent, which is 2.6 percent higher than the overall unemployment rate, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
How Does Remote Work Affect Entry-Level Hiring?
Two recent studies suggests remote work can reduce demand for junior employees because managers face greater challenges training and supervising inexperienced workers from a distance. As a result, employers on remote teams are hiring experienced professionals who require less guidance.
Several studies have attributed the decline in entry-level job prospects to the launch of generative AI tools that can transcribe meeting notes, write computer code and automate customer support functions — tasks that might ordinarily be handled by junior employees. The most notable study, from Stanford University’s Digital Economy Lab, found employment among early-career workers in AI-exposed occupations dropped 16 percent since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022. Other studies have found negligible impact, arguing that it’s too early in the game for employers to have realized workforce efficiencies with this relatively new technology.
Now, two new studies suggest that artificial intelligence may not be the entry-level job killer we thought it was — and that the blame might be more appropriately cast on another post-pandemic phenomenon: working from home.
Is Remote Work Causing an Entry-Level Job Shortage?
Based on an analysis of resume and job board data, Peter John Lambert, postdoctoral research fellow at the London School of Economics and the University of Warwick, and Yannick Schindler, senior research economist at the Ellison Institute of Technology in Oxford, found a sharp shift in hiring patterns. Comparing 2017-2019 and 2023-2025, entry-level hiring dropped 29 percent and junior-level hiring dropped nearly 26 percent, while hiring for senior-level roles increased more than 5 percent. Notably, the decline in entry- and junior-level hiring began in 2022, just before the launch of ChatGPT and the subsequent generative AI boom.
But the true work of the study was to differentiate whether that job loss was better attributed to AI or remote work — two seismic shifts that affected the same types of workers during roughly the same time period. After all, many of the careers that are most exposed to AI — software developers, technical writers and management consultants — are also among the most likely to work from home. Jobs that require an in-person presence, meanwhile — like electricians, janitors and construction laborers — are the least prone to AI replacement.
When evaluating the impact of AI and remote work separately, the study found both predicted a decline in junior-level new hires and job ads requiring limited experience. But when the two factors were analyzed together and controlled against each other, remote work continued to cause junior-level hiring declines, while AI’s impact “attenuates sharply and is often statistically indistinguishable from zero.”
Overall, the researchers concluded that work-from-home arrangements are a “robust predictor of declining relative demand for early-career workers,” and that they have “tilted hiring and recruitment towards more senior and experienced workers.”
If the findings of this study are further validated, its authors say more “micro-level adjustments” may be required to help firms adapt their organizational practices so organizations can “enjoy the benefits of work-from-home arrangements while simultaneously managing the development of early-career talent.”
Remote Work May Impact Training and Development
Another study — this one conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — sought to understand why unemployment among college graduates under the age of 29 rose from 3.1 percent in 2017-19 to 3.7 percent in 2022-25. During that same time period, the unemployment rate among more experienced college graduates dropped from 1.9 percent to 1.8 percent.
The researchers found a striking difference between occupations that can be performed remotely and those that cannot. Among workers in their twenties, unemployment rates in “non-remotable” positions spiked during the pandemic in 2020 before returning to baseline levels soon after. In contrast, joblessness for young professionals working in “remotable” roles increased and then stayed that way, rising by nearly 1 percent between 2017-19 and 2022-24. Because so many young college grads are in remotable occupations, the researchers’ so-called “back-of-the-envelope” calculations determined that remote work accounted for 64 percent of their increased unemployment rates.
In addition to analyzing federal employment data, the researchers also drew on a previous study looking at how a Fortune 500 company’s collaboration was affected by work-from-home arrangements. That study, titled “The Power of Proximity,” found that software engineers who sat in the same office received 18 percent more coding feedback, improving the quality of their work in the long run. They were also more likely to ask follow-up questions than their distributed colleagues and leave for better job opportunities.
The company’s hiring patterns shifted as well. During pandemic-related office closures, it hired more experienced workers. But once its offices reopened, the company returned to hiring younger, less-experienced workers. Meanwhile, managers overseeing geographically distributed teams continued to favor experienced candidates, suggesting that training and mentoring early-career professionals may be more challenging in a remote environment.
“Overall, the firm’s hiring patterns suggest that it is willing to teach junior workers when proximity is feasible but shies away from employing inexperienced workers if distance creates barriers to training and development,” the researchers wrote.
What This Means for Young Professionals
Historically, employers have been willing to invest time into training early-career employees because they know the worker will gain the experience and institutional knowledge needed to grow into more senior roles in the future. But if early-career workers are not able to absorb knowledge as effectively in remote environments, Lambert and Schindler warn the “organizational frictions” of training and supervising young employees “can erode the value proposition of investing in early-career talent.”
Or as the researchers from the New York Fed put it: “Employers may not want to hire fresh graduates onto distributed teams because it is more difficult to teach them the requisite skills from afar.”
Nick Bloom, a Stanford University economics professor who studies remote work, wrote on LinkedIn that the economic turbulence of the pandemic may have also factored into recent college graduates’ employment troubles, and he warned against confusing “the negative employment impact of the COVID lockdown with the longer-run benefits of working from home.”
Whether they are motivated by AI, remote work or economic instability, employers need to invest in hiring and training early-career talent, or they will no longer have a pipeline of skilled workers and leaders to pull from in the future. If an employer with a distributed workforce finds it difficult to train young talent remotely, they will need to find a way to facilitate their professional development through feedback, mentoring and education.
Early-career professionals struggling to find a job, meanwhile, may want to focus their search on companies that offer in-person work — and, more importantly, a willingness to invest in the development of early-career employees. Bloom, the Stanford economist who studies the benefits of working from home, said he advises his students to go into the office at least three days per week in the first five years of their careers.
There’s some evidence that early-career professionals are already seeking out opportunities to go into the office. The New York Fed’s earlier “Power of Proximity” found young software engineers were more likely to come into the office than older engineers. And according to a July 2025 Gallup poll, Gen Z workers favored hybrid work more than any other generation, and they were also the least enthusiastic about exclusively remote work.
While these two recent studies discounted the idea that artificial intelligence is responsible for early-career unemployment, they also did not rule out that it could cause future job loss. It remains to be seen whether the widespread adoption of AI will create a premium for experienced professionals who bring human judgment, problem-solving and soft skills to the table — or if the market will favor early-career professionals who are able to increase their work output through their adoption of the technology.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is AI causing entry-level job losses?
Not necessarily. While some studies have linked generative AI to declining employment among early-career workers, two newer studies suggest remote work may be a more significant factor. One study found that when AI exposure and remote work were analyzed together, remote work remained a strong predictor of declining junior-level hiring while AI’s effect became statistically insignificant.
Why would remote work reduce entry-level hiring?
The research suggests that training, supervising and mentoring inexperienced employees is more difficult when teams are distributed. As a result, employers may prefer hiring experienced workers who require less guidance and can contribute immediately in remote environments.
What does the research say about in-person collaboration?
A recent study found that software engineers who worked in the same office received more coding feedback and asked more follow-up questions than distributed colleagues. The findings suggest physical proximity can improve learning and professional development for early-career employees.
