gen z years are now at the center of fresh warnings from top executives who say AI automation could slam the door on many first jobs. At 10: 00 AM ET, attention focused on remarks from ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink as graduation season nears and entry-level roles tighten. The concern: AI agents and rapid workplace change are colliding with a labor market where recent college graduates are already seeing higher unemployment than the general population.
What the CEOs are warning about
Bill McDermott, CEO of AI-driven software company ServiceNow, said he believes “young people coming out of university today” are experiencing 9% unemployment and warned it “could easily go into the mid-30s in the next couple of years. ” McDermott tied the risk to AI agents that can automate routine tasks typically done by entry- and mid-level employees, arguing that “non-differentiating roles” are increasingly handled by software rather than people.
McDermott also predicted there will be about three billion digital, non-human agents added to enterprises by 2030, emphasizing that the shift could make it harder for young workers to stand out in corporate settings. He added that if more leaders assign AI agents tasks once given to humans, it “will definitely put a damper on who you need to hire. ”
At BlackRock’s 2026 Infrastructure Summit, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said he is “worried” the class of 2026 could face the highest unemployment among new graduates “in years—even without a recession. ” Fink said the speed of AI change is outpacing society’s adaptation, warning that the traditional pathway from a four-year degree to a white-collar job is under strain as entry-level roles are disrupted.
Gen Z Years: the numbers squeezing early-career hiring
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York put the unemployment rate for recent U. S. college graduates ages 22 to 27 at 5. 6%, compared with 4. 2% for the general population. Beyond the headline rate, signs of tightening demand are showing up in early-career postings and competition for each role.
Job postings on Handshake fell more than 16% between August 2024 and August 2025, while the average number of applications per role jumped 26%, highlighting a tougher scramble for fewer openings. A Kickresume report released last year found 58% of Gen Z students who graduated in 2024 and 2025 were still looking for their first job, compared with 25% of millennial and Gen X graduates in previous years.
Additional pressure is appearing in tech hiring. New-graduate hiring in the tech sector at 15 of the largest companies fell by over 50% since 2019, as cited in the provided context.
Immediate reactions from leaders and experts
McDermott framed the issue as a fundamental change in how companies staff routine work, saying AI agents are taking on tasks in “non-differentiating roles” and making it “challenging for young people to differentiate themselves in a corporate environment. ”
Fink, while warning about disruption, pushed back on the idea that college is worthless. He pointed to his own path after graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1974, later earning an MBA with a focus in real estate, and building a career that culminated in decades leading BlackRock. Fink said a four-year degree remains a viable path for some, but “that’s not going to be the pathway for everybody, ” emphasizing the importance of finding purpose and fit.
Broader AI leaders have also voiced job-displacement concerns in the same context: Geoffrey Hinton warned unemployment will grow as “rich people are going to use AI to replace workers”; Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted half of white-collar jobs would be automated by 2030; and OpenAI leader Sam Altman described AI today as “like an intern” that could eventually perform at the level of an experienced software engineer for days at a time.
Quick context and what comes next
Since ChatGPT’s rise in 2022, U. S. job postings have fallen by nearly 32%, based on a November 2025 analysis of Federal Reserve data included in the provided context, while the U. S. economy shed 92, 000 jobs in February in the biggest decline since last October.
Looking ahead from 10: 00 AM ET, executives are signaling that the next battleground will be how quickly employers redesign entry-level roles—and how quickly new graduates adjust. For gen z years, the immediate focus is whether companies expand hiring pathways beyond traditional “first rung” office roles, even as leaders like Fink point to growing demand in skilled trades tied to AI infrastructure and BlackRock commits $100 million to skilled-trade programs aimed at reaching 50, 000 workers over five years.
