The Vanishing Bottom Rung: Designing Early-Career Attraction When Entry-Level Roles Are Disappearing

For decades, the first job was the first rung on a ladder. A graduate joined an organisation, learned the trade through routine work, and gradually climbed. That assumption is now under real pressure. The traditional entry point into work is narrowing, and it is changing how organisations must think about attracting, developing and keeping early-career talent.

This is a Foundation-stage challenge. It sits at the very beginning of the employment relationship, before someone joins, and it affects both the individual preparing for work and the organisation trying to build a pipeline for the future.

Framing the Problem: The Bottom Rung Is Disappearing

The evidence is difficult to ignore. Postings for entry-level jobs in the US overall have declined about 35% since January 2023, according to labor research firm Revelio Labs, with AI playing a big role. The pattern is global, too. Global job postings for roles requiring 0 to 2 years of experience have declined by an average of 29% since January 2024 , based on Randstad's analysis of more than 126 million postings.

This is not simply about automation replacing people. Research points to a subtler shift in how organisations value experience. Harvard economists Seyed Hosseini and Guy Lichtinger, who analysed résumé and job posting data covering 66 million workers across more than 280,000 US firms between 2015 and 2025, found that generative AI is disproportionately reducing demand for workers at the bottom of the career ladder while senior employment at the same firms continues to grow. They describe it as "seniority-biased technological change."

The reason is instructive. In many white-collar jobs, entry-level workers spend their early years handling intellectually routine tasks, including debugging code, reviewing legal documents, drafting communications and entering data, and these are exactly the kinds of tasks generative AI handles best. The work that once taught new starters their trade is the work now being automated.

Deloitte frames this as a structural tension. Its 2025 Global Human Capital Trends report finds that AI is reshaping work by automating tasks, shrinking entry-level roles and accelerating change, creating a growing experience gap as those roles disappear. Put plainly: organisations struggle to find talent with the experience they need, just as workers struggle to find foothold roles where they can gain it.

What Early-Career Candidates Actually Value

It would be easy to read the churn among young workers as a lack of commitment. The data suggests otherwise. Gen Z's average tenure stands at just 1.1 years in the first five years of their career, compared with 1.8 for Millennials, 2.8 for Gen X, and 2.9 for Baby Boomers at the same career point. But the drivers matter more than the number. One-third of Gen Z workers plan to change jobs, and their main motivation is a lack of purpose and progression.

Randstad's own framing is that this is growth-hunting rather than job-hopping. They are not moving for the sake of it, but because of their ambition and a perceived lack of pathways within the roles they are exiting.

Purpose is not a soft extra here. Gallup's research is striking on this point: half of employees with strong work purpose are engaged in their jobs, compared with only 9% of employees with low purpose and 31% of the US workforce overall. Purpose also protects retention. Forty-one percent of employees with strong work purpose are watching for or actively seeking a new job, compared with 68% of those with low purpose.

At the same time, this is a generation carrying real strain. Gen Z and younger millennials are slightly more likely than more senior coworkers to be ambivalent about their workplace, and they report more overall stress and work-related burnout than older generations. Attraction, then, is not only about promising growth. It is about offering steadiness, clarity and support alongside it. Our note on building resilience early explores how self-awareness helps new professionals navigate exactly this kind of pressure.

Building An Early-Career EVP That Promises Future-Readiness

If the traditional job cannot be the whole offer, the employee value proposition has to work harder. Deloitte's research suggests a clear direction. Over 70% of managers and workers are more likely to join and stay with an organisation if its EVP helps them thrive in an AI-driven world.

For early-career talent, an EVP that promises adaptability and future-readiness has a real advantage. Rather than positioning a first role as a fixed step, position it as a place to build capability, judgement and confidence that will remain valuable as work changes. This is where honest storytelling matters more than polished perks, a theme we cover in the role of storytelling in employer branding.

A credible early-career EVP tends to promise three things:

1. Genuine development, not just exposure. Young workers want to grow visibly and quickly.
2. Transparent progression, so candidates can see how effort connects to advancement, even when that path is not a straight line up. The career lattice is a useful model here.
3. Purpose and values alignment, because this is often the deciding factor over pay.

Actions to Consider

• Redesign early roles around judgement, not routine. If AI is absorbing the entry-level tasks that once built experience, deliberately design first roles to develop the skills that endure: problem-solving, communication, stakeholder management and working alongside AI tools.
• Set honest advancement expectations. Avoid implying a fast, linear climb you cannot deliver. Clarity about realistic timelines and non-linear pathways builds the trust that reduces early attrition.
• Connect purpose to progression explicitly. Show candidates how their work contributes to something meaningful and how it develops them. Given how strongly purpose predicts engagement and retention, this is a practical lever, not a slogan.
• Invest in structured support early. With stress and burnout higher among young workers, onboarding, mentoring and regular feedback are part of the attraction offer, not just the retention one.
• Widen the definition of experience. As foothold roles shrink, apprenticeships, rotations and structured graduate programmes become important ways to rebuild the on-ramp others are removing. Our piece on investing in young professionals explores the business case.

Final Thoughts

The disappearing bottom rung is a genuine structural shift, not a passing trend. Organisations that treat it only as a cost-saving opportunity risk hollowing out their future leadership pipeline. Those that respond by rebuilding thoughtful on-ramps, and by offering early-career talent a credible promise of growth, purpose and future-readiness, will be better positioned when experienced talent becomes even scarcer.

The question worth sitting with is this: if a young person joined your organisation today, would their first role genuinely prepare them for the next one, or simply fill a gap until they move on?

Sources & Further Reading

• New research finds Gen Z's average job stint is 1.1 years | Randstad
• Gen Z reshapes early careers in pursuit of growth: Randstad | Staffing Industry Analysts
• Gen Z workers looking for new skills, purpose — along with a new job | FM Magazine
• AI is not just ending entry-level jobs. It's the end of the career ladder as we know it | CNBC
• Entry-Level Hiring Falls 80%: Why AI Is Changing Careers | Forbes
• Generation Disconnected: Data on Gen Z in the Workplace | Gallup
• Purposeful Work Boosts Engagement, but Few Experience It | Gallup
• Deloitte's '2025 Global Human Capital Trends' Aims to Help Leaders Navigate Complex Workplace Tensions | PR Newswire
• AI is revolutionizing work. You need a human value proposition for the age of AI. | Deloitte Insights
• 2025 Global Human Capital Trends | Deloitte Insights