The rapid change in employment among young Americans in the AI era

Daily life living with artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a fairy tale from the future. As AI takes on cognitive labor, the employment difficulties facing college graduates are worsening. The massive consumption of electricity is rapidly driving up power prices in areas near data centers. The reality is that AI brings high growth, but benefits are skewed toward areas like employment. This article tracks the current state of the rapid adoption of AI in the United States.

Employment conditions in the United States are changing. Data from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Student Clearinghouse, which collects student information across the country, show that in the spring of 2025, enrollment at career training schools for trades such as plumbing and carpentry increased by 12% year over year. That is far higher than the growth in college enrollment (4%).

This trend has been strengthening for several years, against a backdrop of growing concern about the future being reshaped by AI. A survey this year by Conjointly, targeting parents of Generation Z aged from 10 to 20-something, found that only 16% believe that “having a college degree guarantees long-term stable employment,” while 77% say that choosing “jobs that are difficult to automate” is very important.

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The Nihon Keizai Shimbun and the Financial Times merged into the same media group in November 2015. The alliance between two newspaper publishers—Japan and the U.K.—both founded in the 19th century is moving forward with a banner of “high-quality, the strongest economic journalism,” and pushing collaboration across a wide range of areas, including joint special reports. In this instance, as part of that effort, article exchanges have been enabled between the two newspapers’ Chinese-language websites.