We’re Hiring A Generation For AI Fluency And We’ll Judge Them On Everything Else

Ah, marvellous. Forbes has uncovered the latest recruitment miracle: a 19 per cent drop in employment for the 22-to-25 crowd in AI-exposed roles — and not a single redundancy letter was sent. The jobs simply declined to exist. According to the piece, this is 'driven by unposted jobs rather than layoffs' — i.e., a Schrödinger's vacancy, open and closed until you apply, at which point it vanishes. The HR department gets to claim it never fired anyone while structural unemployment does the heavy lifting.

To add insult to injury, the survey of 185 employers reveals that more than a third of entry-level roles now demand AI fluency — nearly triple the figure from six months ago. So the young are instructed: learn the magic incantations or remain outside the castle gates. But the pièce de résistance is the headline: 'We're Hiring A Generation For AI Fluency And We'll Judge Them On Everything Else.' That's corporate doublespeak so refined it deserves an award. Hiring for AI fluency but judging on everything else is not hiring; it's a moving goalpost with a thesaurus. Never mind that 'AI fluency' is a moving target; in six months it will be a precondition for making the tea.

The worst of it is the self-congratulation. 'We'll judge them on everything else' implies a benevolent panel of elders with clipboards, evaluating the youth on their pluck and their willingness to work for 'unposted' positions that exist only as statistical artifacts. Meanwhile, the mechanism of exclusion is silent: no applications, no interviews, no rejections, just a 19 per cent hole where the career ladder used to stand. The first skill AI makes obsolete, it seems, is the job application itself. But never fear — the generation will surely be judged on how gracefully they didn't get hired. One wonders if the same employers demanding AI fluency have any fluency in basic decency, but that would require posting a job opening, and we can't have that. Cheers.