Contrary to what some headlines might have you believe, there is no real evidence that generative AI is eliminating entry-level jobs, or any jobs, en masse — at least, not yet. Not in federal data.Sean McGowan doesn’t see evidence of that either, in his work as director of employer relations at Carnegie Mellon University’s Career and Professional Development Center.“When I look at the macro, I haven't seen a change of like, there's less students getting jobs and things like that. It's been still very strong,” he said. “I've actually seen a rise in AI in titles in their first destinations than the prior year. So we are seeing a shift to, like, AI engineers, AI scientists, AI researchers.”For all the hype and all the anxiety around what generative AI could mean for the labor market, it is still early days. ChatGPT debuted less than four years ago. And according to Molly Kinder, who researches AI and the labor market, most companies have not yet fully integrated generative AI into their workflows or replaced workers with AI agents.“I think we've overstated in the short run how much of a big deal AI has been to jobs,” she said. “But we're probably underestimating how transformative it will be in the medium- to long-term. When I look out at the next five to 10 years, I have a lot of concern that AI could be extremely disruptive.” That’s especially the case when it comes to entry-level work. Already, in certain fields, like her world of research, AI can often do the work of an intern or a research assistant. “I don't know what a young person who's a current college student who has no work experience could possibly do for me, sitting at a computer, that AI couldn't do itself,” Kinder said. “Research tasks that I would have given a college student that could take a whole week now get done in five minutes, and I can just immediately check it.”And this is true, or could be soon, of lots of entry-level work in other fields, too — finance, consulting, coding.“Our whole model of training people is going to collapse if we don't intervene,” she said. “And as a society, and especially in Washington, we are woefully underprepared for this.” Kinder thinks the government, colleges, and companies all need to be more proactive in coming up with big ideas and potential solutions for how young people are going to get early work experience in the age of AI.Kenneth Henderson, chancellor for learning at Northeastern University in Boston, is thinking about this all the time.“It's on us as educators to ensure that we adapt very quickly,” he said. “Not in decades, but actually in weeks and months, in order that we're providing the experiences inside and outside the classroom, that ensure the students are ready for the world of work, as it's changing rapidly.”Northeastern already does things differently than most colleges; it has a co-op model, where students in all majors spend a significant portion of their time in school working at different companies.Nearly 60% of students end up getting job offers out of co-op, and Northeastern graduates, as a group, have higher starting salaries than the average college graduate, something Henderson attributes to students coming out of college with 12 or 18 months of work experience.From time to time, over the years, other colleges have reached out to learn more about the co-op model, but it’s been nothing compared to the number of inquiries Northeastern is getting these days. “The door is getting knocked on on basically a daily basis,” Henderson said. “No question there's way more interest in this space than there has been ever in the past, and I think AI is accelerating that.” AI is also pushing the university to think beyond co-op and incorporate more experiential learning inside the classroom, too.These are the kinds of approaches Molly Kinder thinks more schools need to be experimenting with. But she also feels the onus shouldn’t just be on colleges to reimagine the early career ladder.“My big idea is, white-collar careers should look toward the medical residency model, which is just a completely different way of developing talent,” she said. Just as medical residents get paid while they’re training, she thinks these entry-level workers should, too — with funding coming from philanthropy, the government, and private companies.