We need a new first rung …

We're watching the first rung of the career ladder disappear in real time — and the young people paying the closest attention are starting to lose hope.

That's not a metaphor. It's data. Youth unemployment reached 10.8% in 2025 even as the broader economy held steady. Entry-level job postings have dropped 35% as AI automates many of the tasks that once gave young people their first foothold in the workforce. And a recent Axios investigation found that Gen Z excitement about AI dropped 14 points in a single year — down to just 22% — while anger about AI rose nine points to 31%.

These are not the numbers of a generation that's “checked out.” They're the numbers of a generation that's paying attention, and increasingly alarmed by what they see.

The Unfortunate Paradox

Here's what makes this moment particularly painful: Gen Z is, by every measure, the most technologically fluent generation in history. They've grown up with the internet, social media, and smartphones. Many are already using AI tools in creative, practical, and even sophisticated ways — for research, design, writing, coding, and more.

And yet the very technology they've embraced most enthusiastically is the one dismantling the entry points they need to launch their careers.

Employers are now asking for advanced skills earlier. The jobs that used to serve as on-ramps — data entry, administrative coordination, basic research, routine customer service — are being automated. What remains are roles that require judgment, communication, leadership, and nuanced problem-solving. The skills you typically develop in your first few years on the job.

It's a Catch-22 that hits hardest for the young people who can least afford it. This shift disproportionately impacts women — who occupy 79% of jobs at high risk of automation — and first-generation graduates who rely on entry-level roles to build professional networks. The students who most needed that first rung are the ones finding it gone.

What Schools Are Getting Wrong

If employers are raising the bar, you might expect schools to respond by equipping students with AI fluency. In many cases, the opposite is happening. The same Axios reporting that documented Gen Z's anxiety found that more than half of college students say their AI use is either banned or strictly limited by their school.

Think about that for a moment. We are asking young people to compete in an AI-shaped economy while actively restricting their access to the tools that economy runs on.

This is not a criticism of educators — many of whom are genuinely grappling with real questions about academic integrity and critical thinking. But the current approach is leaving students less prepared, not more. When AI is treated as a threat to be locked out rather than a tool to be understood, students lose the chance to develop the very AI literacy that employers are increasingly treating as a baseline requirement.

A credential without capability is not a pathway. It's a promise the labor market won't keep.

What the Research Actually Says

A new whitepaper from a coalition including City Year, the EDSAFE AI Alliance, EducationCounsel, Partnership for Student Success, and Voices for National Service cuts through the noise with a clear-eyed analysis of what's actually happening — and what needs to change.

The paper argues that the solution isn't to out-code the algorithms, but to invest in the uniquely human skills that AI cannot replicate.

In an AI-driven world, the most valuable currency turns out to be deeply human: metacognition, dialogue, community building, and cross-functional teamwork. These are not soft skills in the dismissive sense of the phrase. They are the hardest skills to automate — and the ones that will determine who thrives in the economy ahead.

The paper makes another argument that deserves more attention than it typically gets: AmeriCorps, with its network of 2,000 organizations and a proven 17:1 return on investment, is the nation's ready-made infrastructure for training a resilient, human-centric workforce.

The coalition's policy roadmap calls for expanding the Segal Education Award to cover short-term industry certifications and AI-literacy training, integrating AmeriCorps into the federal workforce development system to create seamless pathways to employment, and establishing a "National Service Credential" to help employers verify durable skills like leadership and grit.

These aren't incremental tweaks. They're a redesign of how we think about the transition from learning to working — exactly what this moment demands.

Service as the New First Rung

There's a quiet truth embedded in all of this research that's worth naming directly: the skills the future of work demands most are the ones you can only build by doing real work with real stakes for real people.

You can't develop genuine leadership in a lecture hall. You can't build cross-cultural communication skills through coursework alone. You can't learn to hold ambiguity, stay calm under pressure, or earn someone's trust from a textbook.

A year of service — the kind of immersive, community-embedded, challenge-rich experience that programs like City Year provide — does something that neither a credential nor a first job can fully replicate. It puts young people in situations where they have to lead, problem-solve, collaborate across difference, and show up consistently for something larger than themselves.

These are exactly the human capacities that AI cannot replicate. And they're the ones employers keep saying they can't find.

Service doesn't just fill a resume gap. It builds the foundation that everything else gets built on. For many young people — especially those without access to elite networks, prestigious internships, or well-connected families — it's not just the best first rung. It's the most equitable one.

What We Owe This Generation

Gen Z didn't create this situation. They inherited a labor market being reshaped by forces far beyond their control, an education system struggling to catch up, and a public conversation about AI that too often swings between hype and doom without offering them anything useful to do with either.

What they deserve is what every generation deserves at the start of their working lives: a real pathway. Not just access to information, but access to experience. Not just skills training, but the chance to discover what they're capable of when they're trusted with genuine responsibility.

The Axios data on Gen Z's declining optimism about AI isn't a reason for despair — it's a call to action. A generation that's paying close enough attention to feel genuine frustration is a generation worth investing in. They're not disengaged. They're waiting for someone to build the ladder.

We should be the ones who build it.

Join Us

City Year Bay Area is actively recruiting for the 2026–2027 service year. If you know a young person who wants to do meaningful work while building the critical workforce skills — including AI fluency — that will define the decade ahead, share this link and help spread the word.

The first rung didn't disappear because young people failed. It disappeared because the economy changed faster than our systems could respond. Building a new one is work we can actually do — and it starts now.

Sources: Powering Workforce Resilience in the Age of AI, EDSAFE AI Alliance / City Year coalition whitepaper; Gen Z, AI, and the Future of Work, Axios (April 2026).