Recent college graduates are struggling to enter industries such as technology and finance, while millennials and Generation X are thriving, The Washington Post reported Nov. 11.
Healthcare is not immune. Health system revenue cycle leaders have said AI and automation are already absorbing the entry-level work that once trained their future leaders.
Since ChatGPT debuted in late 2022, employment for Americans 30 or younger has dropped in office jobs considered highly exposed to AI, such as software development, sales and accounting, according to a Post analysis of data from Stanford (Calif.) University and payroll firm ADP. For workers 35 and older, employment in those same occupations has climbed more than 7%.
Census Bureau data shows a similar split across technology sectors. Employment for workers ages 35-54, a range that covers older millennials and much of Gen X, held steady from early 2023 through late 2025. Over the same period, employment for workers under 35 in those industries fell sharply, according to the Post.
Employers also appear to be seeking more experience when they hire. Job postings for tech, business and legal roles have shifted toward candidates with six or more years of experience and away from those with fewer than three, according to labor research nonprofit Burning Glass Institute.
Experts disagree about what is driving the trend. Some evidence suggests AI is turning experience into an advantage because it amplifies workers’ existing skills while automating entry-level tasks. Another explanation is that employers are leaning on experienced staff to get more done with the same or smaller teams.
“If you’re hiring fewer people, you need people who are operating at peak productivity,” Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, told the Post.
A June research paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York points to remote work as another factor. Because younger workers are harder to train when staff are not together in person, employers have moved from “building talent” to “buying talent,” according to Natalia Emanuel, PhD, a New York Fed research economist and the paper’s lead author.
The healthcare parallel
In revenue cycle, health systems are hiring fewer people for manual data entry, basic coding and claim status checks as AI and automation take over those tasks, executives at Becker’s 11th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference said in October.
“There is no longer this journey where you start as a junior employee and you have all these repetitive tasks that actually teach you how to do your job,” said Beth Hand, interim vice president of care delivery applications at Oklahoma City-based OU Health.
Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic has largely stopped recruiting for some entry-level manual data-entry roles. Instead, it directs early career hires toward prompt engineering, analytics and data storytelling through fellowships, internships and a “citizen developer” track.
Not every employer sees entry-level work shrinking. In an October report from AMS, now part of Korn Ferry, 76% of talent acquisition leaders said entry-level jobs are not disappearing from their organizations, and 81% plan to hire more early-career workers over the next two years. The report lists healthcare among the fields where AI is increasingly handling routine drafting, data gathering and note preparation, which moves junior workers toward judgment, exception handling and AI oversight.
Being in demand does not mean feeling financially secure, though. Only 57% of Gen X workers said their primary jobs provide a stable path toward long-term financial security, the lowest share of any generation, according to a Goldman Sachs Asset Management survey. The figure was 71% for millennials.
The long-term risk
Some executives and labor experts worry the workforce is changing from a pyramid, with a large base of entry-level workers, to a diamond, with relatively few entry-level workers and most employees in midcareer.
“It’s impossible to have a profession where everyone has to have three to five years of experience but you don’t give anyone three to five years of experience,” David Wong, chief product officer of Thomson Reuters, told the Post.
Healthcare leaders have raised the same concern. Gary Zimmer, MD, chief medical officer of Utica, N.Y.-based Mohawk Valley Health System, said at the October conference that if the next generation does not learn the underlying methodology, “you’ll reach a point where people aren’t going to question what they’re seeing.”
