(Feb 13): International Business Machines Corp (IBM) said it will triple entry-level hiring in the US in 2026, even as artificial intelligence (AI) appears to be weighing on broader demand for early-career workers.
While the company declined to disclose specific hiring figures, it said the expansion will be “across the board”, affecting a wide range of departments.
“And yes, it’s for all these jobs that we are being told AI can do,” said Nickle LaMoreaux, IBM’s chief human resources officer, speaking at a conference this week in New York.
LaMoreaux said she overhauled entry-level job descriptions for software developers and other roles to make the case internally for the recruitment push.
“The entry-level jobs that you had two to three years ago, AI can do most of them,” she said at Charter’s Leading With AI Summit. “So, if you’re going to convince your business leaders that you need to make this investment, then you need to be able to show the real value these individuals can bring now. And that has to be through totally different jobs.”
The result is a different mix of duties for early-career workers at IBM. Since AI tools can handle most routine coding tasks, the company’s junior software developers now spend less time on that and more time working with customers. In the human resources (HR) department, entry-level staffers now spend time intervening when HR chatbots fall short, correcting output and talking to managers as needed, rather than fielding every question themselves.
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IBM’s decision comes as questions mount about whether AI will wipe out opportunities for new graduates. Last year, Anthropic chief executive officer Dario Amodei warned that half of entry-level office jobs may vanish by 2030. And recent advances in AI models have stoked anxiety among college students worried about being displaced amid an already tough job market.
Slashing early-career recruitment may save money in the short run, but it risks creating a scarcity of mid-level managers later on, LaMoreaux said. That could force firms to poach talent from competitors, which tends to be more costly than promoting internally. Those hires also typically take longer to acclimate to the company’s culture and systems than those trained in-house, she said.
Some executives and economists argue that younger workers are a better investment for companies in the midst of technological upheaval.
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When it comes to using AI, “it’s like they are biking in the Tour de France and the rest of us still have training wheels”, said Melanie Rosenwasser, the chief people officer of file-sharing platform Dropbox Inc. “Honestly, that’s how much they are lapping us in proficiency.”
Dropbox is now expanding its internship and new graduate programmes by 25% to capitalise on the AI fluency of younger workers, she said.
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