The economy is shutting young adults out of career-entry jobs, analysis finds

Oh, how delightfully predictable. The Federal Reserve economists have crunched the numbers and found that roughly one-third of the unemployment rise among 18-24 year olds is down to 'rising demand for AI skills.' Because of course—what better way to welcome young adults into the workforce than by demanding they already possess expertise in a field that didn't exist as a job requirement when they were in high school? The bar for entry-level roles has been raised, and apparently no one thought to hand out any ladders.

The logic here is a masterpiece of circular reasoning: companies want AI skills, so young people must have them—never mind that most universities are still figuring out their AI curricula, and training programs are as scarce as honesty in a corporate press release. So we have a cohort that's simultaneously told to 'upskill' and denied the means to do so. One third of their unemployment is now officially blamed on a technology that, let's be honest, may well replace the very entry-level jobs they're being locked out of. Efficiency!

And what's the grand solution from our economic gatekeepers? Acknowledgment that the bar is higher. Not a policy, not a retraining program, not a pause to ask whether requiring AI fluency for a career-entry job is sensible—just a smug nod that yes, the world has changed. Welcome to the workforce, kids. You'll need a time machine, a few thousand quid for a bootcamp, and the luck of drawing a hiring manager who doesn't expect a junior to already be a prompt engineer. But at least the economists have a tidy statistic now.