Workforce readiness for students is critical in today's AI-driven economy. Despite spending $200,000 on a college degree, most graduates struggle to secure fulfilling jobs or thrive at work. We spend 30% of our lives working, but most of us are actively disengaged. It's a problem that's extremely expensive to us who must work to make a living, and to the companies where we spend our lives - $1.9 trillion according to Gallup.
Who is responsible for preparing us to thrive at work?
Most point to higher education, hence the $200k price tag. However, higher education institutions seem to disagree, given their underinvestment in career centers. The median budget of college career centers is $417k/yr6 - translating to 2-3 career counselors to serve thousands or tens of thousands of students. As a result, only 11% of college graduates feel very well prepared for the world of work1 and 90% of business leaders believe that college doesn't prepare college graduates with the skills their business needs5.
Despite their frustration, business leaders don't intend to take on the responsibility of training young adults. Especially not when AI is capable of entry-level tasks.
And so, we live in a doom loop:
- Families spend $200k on education, accumulating $1.7T student loan debt 4
- 39% of students drop out of college 8
- 11% of college graduates feel very well prepared to work 1
- 52% of college grads are unemployed or underemployed 3
- 86% of executives plan to replace entry-level jobs with AI and ⅙ have already done so 2
- 36% percent of young adults have mental illnesses, driven by lacking purpose and pressure to achieve 7
Of the ~18.5 million students who enroll in college each year, only ~29% complete their degree and get a college-level job within 6 months of graduation9
Note: By college-level we mean employment in jobs that typically require a 4-year degree, ie. not babysitting or fast food service
If we continue under-investing career development, future generations will have no place in the economy.
The Impact of AI on Entry-Level Jobs: A Rapid Transformation
The impact of AI on entry-level jobs will mirror how globalization transformed manufacturing, but at an even faster pace. Over a span of 2 decades, Americans lost 5 million jobs and 70,000 factories. Companies raced to build factories in countries with low-cost labor and return more profits to shareholders. But unlike manufacturing, AI is much faster to implement - no need to build factories, or negotiate international agreements - just train employees to automate the many rote tasks we used to rely on newbies to do.
Companies have been gradually decreasing entry-level hiring for many years. The percentage of underemployed college grads has risen from 43% to 52% over the last 6 years, and 86% of executives plan to replace entry-level jobs with AI; ⅙ have already done so2
How to Prepare Gen Z for the Workforce: AI-Native Skills for Entry-Level Roles
"What should my kid study? What jobs are future-proof?" We get these questions often from our community of parents and students. The reality is that most of the jobs that will exist in 2030 have not been invented yet10. In 2000, we couldn't have predicted the rise of data scientists, cloud architects, renewable energy technicians, or cybersecurity engineers.
In 10 years, we predict that entry-level employees perform like today's middle managers; but instead of managing people, they will manage AI. Entry-level employees require future-proof skills to manage AI tools effectively, making them indispensable in an AI-driven workforce.
Gen Z has a bad rep for being unprepared and unprofessional11. While this may be true, I think it's unproductive to blame 20-yr-olds for not being job-ready when the institutions we rely on are not preparing them for the workforce. Instead, we focus on their strengths:
What Gen Z may lack in professional experience and wisdom, they can make up for in rapid learning and adoption of new technologies. At Folio, we prepare students to thrive at work AND build a competitive advantage over their skeptical managers:
- Work 101: What your company and manager expects of you, how to manage your time, communicate and work in teams,
- AI 101: How to use AI to scale your capacity, whether you're in sales & marketing, design, supply chain or engineering
Young people have the advantage of speed. They learn and adopt new technologies faster than older generations. At Folio, our mission is to make every generation more valuable, productive and fulfilled than ever before. We see the job-readiness gap as an opportunity to transform the way we prepare future generations to thrive at work, and an opportunity to work with higher education, governments, families and companies to co-create a future where we all thrive.
If you're curious to learn more about how we prepare students for the future of work, and save companies 75% on internship and entry-level talent programs, contact cathy@folio.works.