As AI creates more entrepreneurs and a skills mismatch, Gen Z faces the choice of being a specialist or a ‘general-purpose nerd’

Depending on your point of view, young people today trying to choose an employment path either have immense opportunity or a bleak future.

Entry-level corporate jobs are drying up, whether that’s due to AI or the prevalence of remote work, cutting off traditional avenues for launching careers. At the same time, demand for workers in skilled trades is booming amid the frenzy to build AI infrastructure.

Even more crosscurrents are at work. Baby boomers are retiring en masse, leaving positions to fill, and decades of declining birth rates have created a dearth of young workers.

Lightcast, a labor market data company, predicted in 2024 that U.S. employers will suffer “the largest labor shortage the country has ever seen” amid a demographic drought.

Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce estimated last year that the U.S. economy will need 5.25 million more workers with education and training beyond high school, warning that 171 occupations will face skills shortages through 2032 without massive increases in education.

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