New research shows that remote work, not AI, is linked to declining early-career hiring

New research shows that remote work, not AI, is linked to declining early-career hiring

A major study which examined data on millions of new hires and job postings across four advanced economies suggests that concerns about entry level roles being replaced by AI may be unfounded - and calls for a redesign of hybrid work to better support early-career development.

Based on analysis of 650 million hiring records the research finds that a sharp decline in the share of new hires who are early-career workers is more closely linked to the rise of remote and hybrid working since the Covid-19 pandemic, than to the adoption of artificial intelligence.

The study, The Broken Ladder: AI, Remote Work, and Early-Career Hiring, by Peter John Lambert and Yannick Schindler analyses 243 million employer-employee matches and 407 million online job postings across the UK, US, Canada and Australia between 2017 and 2025. It finds that by 2025, the share of new hires going to early-career workers had fallen between 8 and 11 per cent below 2019 levels across all four countries.

Since the release of ChatGPT in late 2022 it has been suggested that generative AI is reducing demand for junior workers. However, the researchers argue that this conclusion may be premature.

Their analysis shows that occupations most exposed to AI are often the same occupations that experienced the largest shift towards remote and hybrid working. When both factors are examined together, exposure to remote-work remains a strong predictor of declines in the share of junior hiring, while the apparent effect of AI largely disappears.

Research author Peter John Lambert, economist at the University of Warwick, said:

“Our findings suggest that remote and hybrid working arrangements are currently a much better explanation for what we are seeing in the data. However, this shouldn’t be interpreted as an argument for widespread return-to-office mandates. Previous research has highlighted the demonstrable benefits of hybrid working to employee retention, flexibility and access to employment opportunities.”

Co-author Yannick Schindler, Senior Research Economist at the Ellison Institute of Technology, Oxford, continued:

“AI may well still matter for junior hiring, our evidence simply suggests it wasn't the main culprit behind the slowdown in early-career hiring after the pandemic. The encouraging message is that the challenge appears to be organisational rather than technological: if remote working is reducing opportunities for junior workers, employers can respond by redesigning hybrid work around training, mentoring and collaboration.

“That is a much more manageable problem than widespread AI-driven labour displacement. The priority now is to gather highly granular, high-quality data on AI adoption in the workplace, so we can properly disentangle the two great changes currently reshaping work: AI and remote working.”

• Policy briefing: The Broken Ladder: Remote work, AI, and the decline in early-career hiring
• Supporting research: Lambert, P. J. and Schindler, Y. (2026). The Broken Ladder: AI, Remote Work, and Early-Career Hiring by Peter John Lambert and Yannick Schindler. CAGE Working Paper No. 808/2026, University of Warwick