The Missing Rung

AI and the Compression of Entry-Level Work

The labor market disruption from AI is not showing up in aggregate unemployment statistics — it is showing up in a quieter, more structural place: the rate at which young workers and new labor market entrants can access the first professional jobs that would have been available to them two years ago. This brief documents the entry-level compression finding — a 14–16% relative employment decline for workers ages 22–25 in high-exposure occupations, corroborated across five independent research streams — and draws out its implications by career stage.