With AI moving faster than institutions can adapt, there’s growing fear that entry-level jobs might disappear altogether. Some are asking: if AI can handle the junior work, why hire early-career talent?

It’s a fair question, but the most likely outcome isn’t that junior roles will vanish. It’s that the middle collapses.

As AI takes over more routine tasks, junior workers will be expected to take on more complex, higher-impact responsibilities earlier in their careers. In turn, they’ll build skills and experience that, by today’s standards, would qualify as “senior” much sooner.

But this shift doesn’t just push everyone upward; it compresses the entire structure. Mid-level roles shrink. Senior talent gets stretched thinner. Early-career employees are expected to leap into the deep end with less guidance than ever before.

AI doesn’t eliminate the need for training. It just raises the baseline for what “entry-level” looks like, without updating the systems that help people get there.

We’ve seen similar shifts before:

• When spreadsheets replaced calculators, analysts stopped crunching numbers and started interpreting trends.

• When search engines made information instantly accessible, knowledge work shifted from memorization to synthesis.

• When tools like Canva and Figma empowered non-designers, designers moved into systems thinking and brand strategy.

• When low-code platforms made app-building easier, developers focused less on syntax and more on system architecture.

In each case, the work didn’t disappear. It evolved. And more often than not, responsibility shifted downward. What used to be considered mid-level expectations became the new minimum.

So Yes, Workers’ Fears Are Valid.

They’re not just afraid of change. They’re afraid of being expected to perform at a higher level without the time, training, or support to get there.

In many fields, the middle is getting more compressed.

Roles like editors, project managers, coordinators, assistants, and analysts are increasingly augmented by tools. The roles that remain are burdened with more responsibility than ever. Early-career workers are left to figure things out on their own, while senior employees are stretched beyond their limits.

This isn’t the end of junior roles.

It’s the end of the slow ramp-up that made entry-level sustainable.

If AI is going to flatten the ladder, we need to build new rungs like training, mentorship, and structured support so early-career workers have something to climb.

Because the floor isn’t falling out from under us. It’s just rising.

The question is: who are we helping climb with it?