The Class of AI Reports for Duty — and the Job Market Is Very Weird

The Most In-Demand — and Most Anxious — Grads Ever

Meet the Class of 2026. They started college just a few months before ChatGPT splashed into the world, which makes them the first truly “AI-native” cohort to hit the workforce. And employers have a genuinely split personality about them.

SharkNinja’s CEO invited two dozen students to a two-day AI hackathon and is hiring around 200 “AI-forward” grads and interns this year. “The AI skills they’re bringing are more advanced than the person with 20 years’ experience,” he said. Companies like IBM (IBM), Salesforce (CRM) and MetLife (MET) say they’re ramping up hiring of fresh grads precisely to capture those native skills.

In a Gallup survey, 22% of 18-to-24-year-olds said they felt “very prepared” to compete in an AI-shaped market — the highest of any age group. Confidence, they’ve got.

The Catch

Here’s the other half. Entry-level jobs — coding, building slide decks, basic data work — are exactly the tasks AI does well, which means some grads have become the first casualties of AI-flavored cost-cutting. Unemployment among 22-to-27-year-old college grads hit 5.6% in March, one of the highest rates since 2013 outside the early pandemic.

A survey of nearly 1,500 employers found the share cutting back on junior hires grew to 17% from 13% the year before. Commencement speakers — including former Google (GOOGL) CEO Eric Schmidt — literally got booed this month when they brought up AI. The kids are not entirely thrilled.

What This Means For Your Money

This is a story about human capital — the most valuable asset most people own, and the one no brokerage statement shows. For your kids and grandkids, the lesson isn’t “learn to code” or “don’t”; it’s “learn to use the tools that make you 10x faster,” because that’s what’s now getting hired.

For your portfolio, it’s a reminder that the AI productivity wave is showing up in real corporate earnings, not just hype — which supports owning the companies deploying it. But it cuts both ways for the labor market, and a labor market with 5.6% young-grad unemployment is worth watching for what it does to consumer spending down the line. We own the picks-and-shovels of AI; we don’t assume it’s a free lunch for everyone.