AI reportedly wreaks havoc on the entry-level job market in the UK

The meteoric rise of AI over the past years is starting to fundamentally shift the industrial landscape. However, experts have been sounding the alarm that companies will increasingly replace human workers with AI. For instance, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that AI could eliminate 50% of entry-level jobs in the next five years.

Dario Amodei’s predictions now seem eerily accurate as Adzuna, a UK-based job search site, has reported a sharp drop in job vacancies for new entry-level roles. The research claims that, since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, the UK’s job market has seen a 32% drop in new “graduate jobs, apprenticeships, internships, and junior jobs with no degree requirement”, reports The Guardian.

This decline in new entry-level job vacancies has also reportedly resulted in entry-level jobs contracting to only 25% of the total UK job market in 2025, a 4% decrease compared to 2022.

Adzuna’s findings appear to be consistent with Indeed’s. The Guardian, citing Indeed, claims that university graduates in the UK are dealing with the “toughest job markets since 2018” as “roles advertised for recent graduates had fallen 33% in mid-June compared with the same point last year”.

“You can’t just step in front of the train and stop it”

The relentless march of AI isn’t going to be stopped, as companies both big and small are rapidly evolving to incorporate more AI in their workforce. Microsoft, for instance, already produces 20-30% code with AI. Google produces even more. 

In all of this, Dario Amodei’s warning that “you can’t just step in front of the train and stop it” makes perfect sense. The only thing we can do, per Dario, is “steering the train—steer it 10 degrees in a different direction from where it was going. That can be done. That’s possible, but we have to do it now.”

It remains to be seen how governments around the world regulate AI to ensure that the phase of short-term rise in unemployment that often marks the start of any new “Industrial Revolution” doesn’t hurt as badly this time.

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