In May 2025, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned the public that AI technology could eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years, potentially causing unemployment to spike to between 10% and 20%. Amodei stated that companies and the government are "sugarcoating" the risks of AI whilst most workers remain unaware of the impending changes.
According to a 2024 report by venture capital firm SignalFire, Big Tech hiring of new graduates has dropped 50% from pre-pandemic levels, partly due to AI adoption. In 2024, early-career candidates accounted for just 7% of total hires at Big Tech firms, down by 25% from 2023, whilst at startups, that figure is merely 6%, an 11% decrease from the previous year. Heather Doshay, a partner at SignalFire, noted that AI is doing what interns and new grads used to do, but emphasised that AI isn't stealing entire job categories outright—it's absorbing the lowest-skill tasks, shifting the burden to universities, boot camps, and candidates to level up faster.
Amodei proposed concrete solutions, including spreading public awareness of the incoming change, developing AI literacy, and preparing policymakers to develop solutions for an economy where superintelligence is a reality. The Anthropic Economic Index released in February 2025 showed that AI use currently leans more towards augmentation (57%), enhancing human processes, which Amodei describes as a short-term strategy since in the long term, everything humans do is eventually going to be done by AI systems.
Sources:
1.
Sabrina Ortiz
2.
Chris Morris
3.
Ana Altchek
