Congrats on the Degree—Now Compete With a Chatbot
Congrats on the Degree—Now Compete With a Chatbot
Your $200,000 degree might now qualify you to lose a job to a language model. Welcome to the AI-shaped job market.
The job market for recent college grads is shrinking—fast. The New York Fed reports 5.8% unemployment, and even elite MBAs are struggling. Why? Three signals flash yellow.
First, pandemic aftershocks and tech layoffs have dried up entry-level roles. Second, the ROI on college degrees is falling, employers are less impressed than they used to be. And third, and most alarmingly, AI might be replacing the very tasks new grads train to do: writing, researching, and analyzing.
- Job postings for programmers have halved since 2022
- The “recent-grad gap” just hit a 40-year low
- AI is quietly eating white-collar entry-level work
In the age of intelligence, survival isn’t about credentials, it’s about reinvention. I see a deeper issue: Are we equipping young people to adapt faster than machines evolve? What would you teach every graduate to stay relevant in a world run by algorithms?
Read the full article on Something Alarming Is Happening to the Job Market.
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Dr. Mark van Rijmenam
Dr. Mark van Rijmenam is The Digital Speaker, a world-leading futurist and global AI keynote speaker who helps leaders decide what AI, and the technologies that follow it, mean for their business. He speaks to leadership teams at their retreats and to conference audiences worldwide, and his WAVE framework gives them a way of deciding that they keep using long after he has left the room. His Intelligence Age Scorecard measures how ready an organization is across the four WAVE pillars.
He holds a PhD from the University of Technology Sydney, is a Certified Speaking Professional and Global Speaking Fellow, and ranks among the world’s top futurists on the Global Gurus list (#1 in 2025, #3 in 2026). Salesforce named him one of its 16 leading AI voices. He has written six books, most recently Now What? How to Ride the Tsunami of Change, writes the Synthetic Minds newsletter on Substack, and founded Futurwise. Talk to his digital twin on WhatsApp: +1 (830) 463-6967.
