[muisc]

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. It's March 25th, spring break for some of you, opening day of the baseball season, a national holiday for some of you. We'll give that a few minutes at the end of the show today, but if you're a senior in college or even finishing grad school by this time of year, many people are starting to think about the job market, obviously, and so are employers. Well, if you're about to finish school or if you've graduated from college in the last couple of years, you probably already know it's rough out there. We're seeing that message across a bunch of recent reporting. A headline in The New York Times just yesterday, maybe you saw it reads, "Young Graduates Face the Grimmest Job Market in Years." The Financial Times called it a job apocalypse a few months ago.

This has been building for a while now. My guest Lindsay Ellis wrote a piece for The Wall Street Journal last year with a headline, AI Is Wrecking an Already Fragile Job Market for College Graduates. This is not from one thing, tariffs, now the war, still relatively high interest rates, which specifically tamp down hiring to fight inflation. That's what high interest rates do, and definitely that AI might already be chipping away at the bottom rung of the career ladder, hitting entry-level white collar jobs more than anything else. entry-level white collar jobs.

What happens if that entry point disappears? What does that mean not just for this year's grads, but for the entire workforce pipeline for who knows how many years as AI takes deeper root? Lindsay Ellis is a reporter at The Wall Street Journal and she joins us now. Lindsay, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Lindsay Ellis: Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with a story. One example from your reporting. You spoke to a college student, Jaden Tate, whose mentor at the University of Albany, my alma mater, as it happens, told him straight up, "This field is being taken over by AI. It might not exist in five years." Can you walk us through your Jaden Tate story, just as an example of what's happening out there.

Lindsay Ellis: I met Jaden at a conference in Washington, D.C. where I'm based on AI, and I asked, "Tell me a little bit about your job search." He studied a field informatics at the University at Albany, and basically he was really hoping to go into the field of user experience, making sure that when you go on an app or on a website, it's intuitive, you know how to navigate it, a field that was quite popular for grads in recent years. His mentor, you're absolutely right, said, "This field might not exist in the next few years."

Jaden went to a number of conventions just like the one I met him at, trying to meet companies, ask if they were hiring and shake some hands. He also applied to a bunch of jobs, both inside adjacent fields to where he was looking, but also casting a much wider net as well. He mentioned that a bunch of his friends from college, and they graduated last year would be working retail jobs or food service jobs to try and make things happen before they landed a white collar role.

Brian Lehrer: Just on that particular field that his mentor told him might not exist anymore, you got me curious in the way you answered the question. Are you talking about what they call front end website design or digital design, in other words, making a website or anything else digital look good for the user to make it user friendly for the user experience, and that AI can now do that kind of design as well as people who have in their heads what other people might like using?

Lindsay Ellis: Might like to use. Yes, that was the kind of work that Jaden was hoping to do upon graduation. Many AI tools can make websites look pretty good, no coding required. There are tools that, pretty intuitively using natural language prompts, can create good looking website tools or some backend code that is pretty intuitive for users to use on the front end as well. That individual who would previously play the intermediary might find themselves working more actively with AI than direct coding.

Brian Lehrer: Which means AI can make color choices, where to place buttons on a webpage or an app that will make users smile, things that seem so human.

Lindsay Ellis: Right. We are so used to clicking on these tools and navigating these sites every day, and a lot of us don't think of really what happens behind the scenes there.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we want you in on this. Help us report this story. College seniors or anyone who's graduated in the past few years, undergrad or grad school, tell us your stories of looking for a job. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Parents of young grads, you can do that too to help us report this story. Talk about your kids' experience. Faculty, you heard that story of the mentor. How are you preparing your students now? 212-433-WNYC. Call or text. 212-433-9692.

Hey employers, you are definitely invited too. You can really help everybody just by being honest. You don't even have to think of it as a true confession. Maybe you're just doing what seems the smart thing to do for your business. What are you doing? Because it'll help everyone to know. Have you started using AI in place of what would have been an entry-level human worker in the past? 212-433-WNYC. Anyone in any of those categories or anyone else who I haven't even thought of who could help us report this story, 212-433-WNYC, call or text, 212-433-9692, with Lindsay Ellis from The Wall Street Journal.

You write, Lindsay, that there used to be this unwritten contract. Young workers do the grunt work and companies train them so they can move on to greener pastures. You say that a years-long hiring slump is breaking down that contract. Talk about the breakdown a little bit maybe from the employer side. What's replacing that contract, if anything, in addition to AI?

Lindsay Ellis: It's a great question. When my colleagues and I started working on this particular story one thing that we heard over and over again was that AI is layered on an already very difficult environment for hiring, and we see that at the entry level. We also see it a lot of other places. When I talk to seniors who are trying to do one more career move before retirement, when I'm talking to people, maybe new parents who are trying to navigate finding work after taking some time off, there is a lot of uncertainty in the labor market right now and there has been for years.

Let's walk through the last few years. With Russia and Ukraine, geopolitical conflict brings a lot of uncertainty. Inflation, which followed there in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, there was a lot of policy uncertainty. Now, of course, everything happening in Iran. Employers don't like to project high ambitious large scale headcount growth when they're unsure of the of the wider economic environment and how their company is going to navigate it.

I'm going to get a little bit into the weeds here. This is hitting entry-level workers especially hard because typically companies project how many new grads they're going to hire not at spring break, not even at Thanksgiving break the year before, but maybe the summer before or the spring before. It's such a long runway when companies say, "Okay, it's spring of 2026. How many new grads are we going to need to hire more than a year from now?" That is a common conversation that entry-level hiring teams have. When there's a really uncertain environment in the world that's slowing down hiring, it's much more difficult to commit to a certain level of headcount.

That means that a college junior who's doing an internship, a company might be a little bit more hesitant to extend a return offer or an offer of full time employment after graduation, senior year. Then you layer AI on top of that, and that has totally changed the game for decision making here, because even if AI isn't very good at doing your job now, there's so much hype and so much fast development with this technology that a hiring team could reasonably say, "Six months from now, what could this tech be doing? Can we commit to bringing someone on in six months if we're not sure about the tech capabilities or this geopolitical reality, inflationary environment?"

Anyway, a lot of uncertainty there. I'm certainly rambling, but this white collar hiring slump and these fears of, "What is the economy going to do?" that has totally weakened this contract, as you quoted from the story, of employers extending a hand, rolling down the ladder for entry-level workers to come up. AI now is this very curveball force that companies are trying to grapple with and understand as they're making some of these decisions.

Brian Lehrer: I'm glad you went that deep on describing not just what already is, but the uncertainty. We had a listener yesterday who said they wanted to make a T shirt in the weeds with The Brian Lehrer Show, so I appreciated that you started that answer by saying, "Okay, we're going to get into the weeds here," because that's-

Lindsay Ellis: I love the weeds.

Brian Lehrer: -one of the things as public radio and with the long form format of this show that we have the luxury of, and I know our listeners really appreciate the weeds. Let's take a phone call from Robert in Neptune, New Jersey, who wants to ask about a particular field with respect to the entry-level job market. Robert in Neptune, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Robert: Hello. Thanks for having me. I'm interested in knowing what the impact will be in the accounting and finance spaces and all the departments and sub departments associated with that, and the executive roles like chief financial officers, all the way down to entry-level accountants. That whole area, the back office of businesses, I can see that being really impacted by AI, but I haven't heard much about it.

Brian Lehrer: Lindsay, can you help on that particular field?

Lindsay Ellis: It's a great question. The accounting industry is a really interesting one, especially at the entry level because for years, accounting firms have been warning, "Hey, we do not have enough grads to fill these roles." Accounting is really hard. In many places, it takes an extra year of college to get the CFA designation and studying for a really tough exam. It was really hard over the last few years to convince college students, "Hey, pursue this path which doesn't pay as well as these really high level finance consulting jobs that you need to do less school for and not take a hard test."

On the accounting front, I think the fear has recently been that there would be a shortfall of talent. When it comes to AI tools, I certainly know that companies are leaning on these technologies to streamline work, to take the first pass at some documents, calculations and the like. I think there are some hopes that this could actually ease a little bit of an entry-level labor shortage there.

My colleague Justin Lahart reported just yesterday, there was a survey recently of about 750 CFOs, and they categorized which types of roles might be more impacted here that. They designated routine clerical admin roles as more exposed to AI, positions like architects, engineers, not these backend finance jobs, as more likely to keep their jobs, especially if they can use AI to their benefit.

Anecdotally, I have talked to employers who say, "Look, we are not going to take an entire category of workers and turn that over to technology." Instead it might be, "Hey, do we have to backfill this back end finance job, or can we lean on AI and have the team do the same amount of work but leaning on technology instead of tapping their colleague on the shoulder?" If that makes sense.

Brian Lehrer: Lindsay and also Robert to your question, here's an anecdote I think from another caller. It's probably not going to be what you're hoping to hear, but Hans in Bayshore, you're on WNYC. Hi Hans.

Hans: Hello. How're you doing? Love your show.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Hans: I have a daughter who's an accountant and I hear a lot about what's going on in her industry. My son was an auto mechanic. He's back at school, he wants to be an accountant. He's trying to get experience and there's no experience. I hear all the time that AI, like you were just mentioning, is doing a lot of the simple jobs that these kids would get as entry-level jobs, whether they're internships or paid. They're not--

Brian Lehrer: Whoops, sorry, Hans, I accidentally cut you off there for a second. Keep going. You can pick up right where you were.

Hans: He wants to be an accountant. He was an auto mechanic, and he's thinking, "Maybe I should go back to that because that's not going to be affected by it. That's hands on and using your mind a different way." He's struggling trying to get experience, and AI has taken a lot of those jobs from what I hear. How do you build experience when you're in school to get a job for a full time job?

Brian Lehrer: Hans, I'm sorry to hear that about your kid. It's funny, I wrote a question for later in the segment specifically about auto mechanics, but Lindsay, how would you begin to answer the question that he asked?

Lindsay Ellis: I'm so sorry your kid is going through this. I would say a couple of different things. One, this question of how do you get experience when many of the tasks that would give you that experience can now be tossed to artificial intelligence instead? A lot of companies are grappling with this. I've heard companies go in a couple of different directions because many employers know that your managers five years from now are going to be the people who learned by really, as we said earlier, getting in the weeds, sinking into the work, doing the grunt work, that that teaches you the higher-level analysis skills.

One company I talked to said that they are doing more intensive training sessions for individuals who they are hiring to basically try and give them that experience, front load it into a training intensive instead of expecting that you learn on the job. That doesn't solve the problem for your son of, how do you get in the door to begin with? I think that is going to be such a big question that higher ed will be grappling with, companies will be grappling with. I think it is a live ball right now.

Brian Lehrer: We have so many good callers on this. George in Carlstadt, we see you talking about being a mentor for engineering students. That goes to what Lindsay was just discussing, how students are being trained now. Dr. Ritchie, professor at NYU on teaching AI literacy to help students in the job market. We see you. We're going to get to both of you, but I want to go to somebody who graduated in 2024 and wants to tell her story. Atara in South River, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Atara, thank you so much for calling in.

Atara: Yes, thank you for having me. I graduated from Arizona State University, 2024. Shout out to all the Sun Devils, the ASU. I got my bachelor's degree in Geographic Information Science. I had an internship with the town of Gilbert. I worked under their planning department and right now I'm a substitute teacher. I'm just trying to find something full time in my field, but I'm having trouble, but so far I've been getting interviews but no official offers.

I would say that my field, GIS is a unique type of niche field, but basically working with maps, programming maps. Basically, if you think about anything with programming or geography, that's basically what my major is a combination of-

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. You mean when you click on a maps app, for example, some human has to have programmed that app so it gives you the right information?

Atara: Yes. If you go on any city website or any town website and you look at the maps of the town or the city, most likely somebody that studied GIS made that. That's what basically I studied and what my expertise is, but I also like working with the planning departments in cities and towns. I'm just looking for an opportunity. Hopefully I get one very soon.

Brian Lehrer: What are the cities and towns that you might be applying to telling you? Presumably those entities are still going to need people, not just AI, but maybe I'm wrong, who can make those kinds of specialized infrastructure maps, things like that, that city governments need. What are they telling you?

Atara: So far the interviews that I've had, they just asked me about my skill level. I know AI is getting into my type of field because what I've seen on different-- The software company Esri, they deal with GIS software and all that and they're having a conference soon about AI into GIS, so I know that's creeping into my industry coming up soon. I've applied to the city of New York, their GIS positions.

I've applied to even cities in Arizona like Chandler. I've applied cities in California, Florida, even in my home state of New Jersey. So far as just interviews, I don't know if they're looking for somebody that's more experienced, but I just want to want somebody to give me a chance to-- that I can be employed, at least, so I can use my skills that I learned in college.

Brian Lehrer: All right, I'm going to invite you to do something, and producer, heads up. Atara, if you want to leave your contact information, I'm going to say now, listeners, if you work anywhere that has a GIS potential job opening, and Atara sounds like the qualified, obviously very earnest and apparently quite educated employee who you might like to have, text us and we'll try to make a match. Atara, we're going to put you on hold, and you can leave your contact if you want, and we'll see if anything works out.

Lindsay Ellis from The Wall Street Journal, again, a very specific story about a specific field. We heard about accounting from the first two callers. I don't know if you have anything for Atara or to put her into context with respect to that municipal mapmaking kind of work.

Lindsay Ellis: My only familiarity with GIS and geography is a good friend of mine in college studied it, but beyond that, I cannot be extremely helpful there. I will say, though, it is no small feat to get interviews these days, and the fact that you are is remarkable. When I talk to job seekers, I've talked to so many dozens of people over the last year who are looking for work, the thing that they struggle with most is when they apply online, and it feels like their resume and cover letter are in this black box and are never touched. Breaking through to the interview stage and having those connections, those real life conversations with employers, that is no small feat.

Informational interviews, real interviews for a position, those types of connections seem to be where people I interview get traction. Breaking through to that stage is remarkable. I know it doesn't solve the overall problem, but clearly you are on your way to finding the right role.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Dr. Ritchie, NYU professor on including AI in how he teaches his students. Professor, thank you for calling in. Hi, what you got?

Dr. Ritchie: Hi, thanks, Brian. As they always say, longtime listener, first-time calling. I teach hospitality technology at NYU, and this year alone, I've started to increase AI literacy. Many of the kids are actually-- they are just using ChatGPT or any of the LLM and they think they know AI.

First of all, I think we need to do these guys a favor, the new grads to teach them the new 21st century skill, which I call this AI literacy or AI fluency, which means the ability to understand, evaluate, and really critically use artificial intelligence tools. We need to actually teach these tools. I now actually put in my syllabi, every week we teach different tools that is related to the topic that we cover. I am hoping at the end of 14, 15-week semester that actually they know AI literacy.

It shows, I don't know if you know Brian, that many universities are now opening new programs, AI majors starting this semester or last semester, anywhere from UPenn to University of California, either grad or undergrad majors in AI. Those kids are not fortunate enough to go into these majors and to know a lot about AI, and they really need to do this.

Tara's thing, I also advise hundreds of NYU students in terms of getting the jobs, being prepared to interviews. She's so right. Thousands of them are going through the same thing. My advice to them is really use your network. My students know your network is your net worth. As Einstein always say, definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting the different results.

Don't send hundreds of resumes and definitely do not have your cover letter written by AI or any LLM. Employers are actually seeing that and using the network together with your search and most importantly, preparing for the interviews. Like I say, fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Those are the two important critical steps; knowing AI, increase your AI literacy. Add something in your CV that you are an AI literate in addition to your degree, because degree is going to get you somewhere. Once you get these interviews, that preparation and your network will help.

Brian Lehrer: Professor, you mentioned AI majors that some schools are developing now. If you know, what's in an AI major? Because a lot of listeners might think, "Wait, AI replaces what human beings do. How does a university train somebody as an AI major to do what?"

Dr. Ritchie: To do different aspects of AI. They do AI and finance and AI in health and robotics and ethics. Even some of the law schools, they are actually putting AI in law. The feature of law, we always say technology is behind the law. We've seen this in Airbnb. In fact, when Airbnb came out, law, the legal world, was not even ready having people actually get their homes to be rented.

University of Pennsylvania, they've actually put that-- they're launching these degrees. They're basically learning analytics and what is artificial intelligence, what is not the ethics of it, and different tools that they are actually being used. Then I ask the students, "What AI tools you use to make your life easier or to make your job easier?" all I hear is just ChatGPT, which is only one small tool among thousands of other tools that can make our life much, much simpler.

Brian Lehrer: Professor, we really appreciate that you called in. That might be very helpful. Wow. We're getting a nice response for our caller, Atara, who works, if you didn't hear her, in the field of GIS, geographic information services, which is mostly different kinds of map making, mostly for municipal governments and things like that. There's one that actually has an opening that we're going to pass along to her. I'm not going to say that on the air, though, give that contact information.

A couple of people wrote in advice for Atara that the rest of you may be interested in hearing. Atara, maybe you know all this, but here are some things. Listener said, "Please tell Atara to apply at environmental consulting firms, engineering consulting firms, and architectural firms. They employ GIS graduates within their firms to help design maps for environmental reporting that is submitted to the regulatory agencies. They also design maps that are used in the field for field work."

Another one for Atara, "The Department of Interior, federal government, NPS-" which I think is National Park Service, "-USGS, all have those kinds of jobs." Yet another one, they're still coming in, Atara, "This GIS lady-" as they called you, "-might consider the military, like the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency or the Department of the Interior." Someone else suggests, "The transit authority for a potential job in planning. They need people who know maps." Whether this works out for her or not, Lindsay, this is all very heartening that all these people would write in with these specific [unintelligible 00:30:34]

Lindsay Ellis: I know. I love hearing this list. It's wonderful to hear this list. I think also just a good reminder, and I hear this from career coaches, from people who have successfully found jobs that thinking beyond one specific industry and thinking, "How can I apply my skills to various avenues, maybe an unexpected avenue?" and just having conversations with people who do different things, that that could lead to, "Oh, I'll think about you next time my company has an opening."

Brian Lehrer: Yes, or work for Uber. Every time I'm in an Uber coming home, there's this one wrong turn that the GPS always tells it to make. I have to say, "No, it's going to tell you to go straight here, but you should really make a left." Even that kind of thing. All right. Here's a clip of Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic. That's the company that runs the AI chatbot, Claude. He talked to Anderson Cooper a couple of months ago on 60 Minutes and laid out some pretty alarming predictions. Here's that clip. 45 seconds.

Anderson Cooper: You've said AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white collar jobs and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years?

Dario Amodei: Yes.

Anderson Cooper: That's shocking.

Dario Amodei: That is the future we could see if we don't become aware of this problem now.

Anderson Cooper: Half of all entry-level white collar jobs?

Dario Amodei: If we look at entry-level consultants, lawyers, financial professionals many of the white collar service industries, a lot of what they do AI models are already quite good at, and without intervention, it's hard to imagine that there won't be some significant job impact there. My worry is that it'll be broad and it'll be faster than what we've seen with previous technology.

Brian Lehrer: Dario Amodei there. You know what my question is for you, Lindsay, coming out of this? There was that one little reference in there for-- I'll just read that line. "AI models are already quite good at it, and without intervention, it's hard to imagine that there won't be some significant job impact there." When he says, "Without intervention, so many jobs are going to be eliminated," do you have any sense of what he might be talking about, things that can actually be done to avoid that future?

Lindsay Ellis: First of all, I would love to talk to him more about that and understand exactly what he is referencing there. I've seen attempts for intervention on a few different fronts. One, like a caller mentioned earlier, many universities and schools are leaning into AI education to familiarize students with this technology, get them to the cutting edge so that they can come into an organization and know, "We could deploy this here. It actually won't work very well here. Here's where you need a lot of extra review. Here's where there might need to be security vulnerabilities."

One potential intervention could be education. I do know a number of companies are leaning into training, be it in the workforce or in education. You see a number of the major AI tools, the companies that own them, basically issuing their pro models for free to certain segments to really get them to a more advanced level. It's not someone asking about a travel itinerary in ChatGPT, but instead, making a complex workflow with autonomous agents or semi autonomous agents to really conduct solid work.

I think that is going to take a lot of education and training and we've seen attempts to do that in higher education, to a degree, through community services. I attended, for example, an AI training session at a local library maybe six weeks or so ago. I wonder if that is really his core reference there.

Brian Lehrer: George in Carlstadt, you're on WNYC. Hello, George.

George: Good morning. I'd like to point out that the problem is actually a little deeper than just AI. Let's assume for a minute that AI didn't exist. A lot of the entry-level jobs that an engineering student would go for don't exist in this country anymore. They've all been exported. We're building iPhones and so on overseas. Boeing has a lot of subcontractors all over the world that are building parts for them. Those low level jobs that starting-out engineers would get exist.

In addition to that, our schools-

Brian Lehrer: Wait, let me jump in for a second because I see you told our screener you're a mentor for engineering students. Just so they know that context, and I assume you're going to land on how you're mentoring your students in the environment you're describing, but go ahead.

George: You want me to do that first?

Brian Lehrer: Oh, it's up to you.

George: Okay. I'm a retired engineer and I've been mentoring students in a number of aerospace STEM programs for over a dozen years now. If your readers are interested, they can go to www.rocketcontest.org. it's a middle school, high school program. You can go Google NASA SLI, the Student Launch Initiative, or one of the college level programs that I work with. That's my background.

Getting back to what I was talking about, one of the issues that I've noticed in a lot of the universities that I work with is they're not teaching the proper entry-level skills anymore. There's very little hands-on education in many engineering programs. There's one SUNY engineering school where the kids are not allowed to use things like epoxy in the lab because it's considered a toxic chemical. They're not allowed to use power tools because of liability concerns.

For me it's a much deeper problem than just AI. Until we approach this in a multifaceted, multiprong approach, more holistic approach, I don't think we're going to solve the problem. If anything, it's going to get worse. That's what I think.

Brian Lehrer: George, thank you for your input. We really appreciate it. Lindsay, I want to read a text from a listener. We're getting a couple like this, actually. One listener just wrote, "This job market advantages students of privilege." Another similar one says, "AI reinforcing nepotism. AI is changing the job hunt, even for positions not being taken over by AI. Employers using AI to screen resumes are likely losing strong employees because AI won't recognize the human emotional intelligence essential for a strong employee. People with lots of experience aren't getting interviews after sending 100 resumes for open positions. Where they land is AI is reinforcing nepotism, somebody who knows somebody."

Do you have anything on that?

Lindsay Ellis: Oh, I've done a good bit of reporting on this. I think that reinforces a lot of maybe not nepotism so much as leaning on your network, certainly leaning on the brand name schools or the brand name former employers. That is certainly happening.

Brian Lehrer: There's a difference between using your network and, "I got my kid a job," right?

Lindsay Ellis: I do think that there is a lot of overwhelm among the hiring managers. I talk to a lot of job seekers who are plenty overwhelmed too, don't get me wrong, but when I talk to companies, when I talk to hiring managers, recruiters, if they open a job and put it online, you could not believe the number of applications that flood in almost instantaneously.

I think because, as one of the listeners pointed out, AI is sorting and ranking applications, a lot of job seekers feel like, "If I submit dozens or hundreds, I've talked to some people, more than a thousand applications, one of them is going to get me to a yes." On the other side of that, you have a hiring manager recruiter who posts a job and 24 hours later has several hundred, if not more, applications to sort through.

When faced with all of that, and you have, if you're a hiring manager for a team, maybe other work to do too and you know someone like a colleague's mentee from college or someone who is the daughter of your neighbor, that's an easy cut through to make to rely on the people you know in an environment where there are tons and tons of candidates. When everybody is using AI to write their resumes and write their cover letters, all of these materials look and sound the same.

I talked to a number of companies earlier this year. They used to take what they called a, "Talent is everywhere," school-agnostic approach to hiring. They would basically open a role and say, "We do not care where you went to college, we want you to apply." This was very popular post-2020 after the murder of George Floyd. It was a core part of many corporate diversity initiatives.

In this environment where the tech has totally made this avalanche of applications in a lower hiring environment where companies are being more selective about the number of positions they can open and who they can bring through the door, companies tell me openly, "We're not taking that approach anymore. It wasn't working for us. We are leaning on core or target schools, many of which with brand names, to winnow the pool a little bit." I think the listener who wrote in is spot on that this is a reversion to a lot of these tendencies that can be more exclusionary or narrow the field by design.

Brian Lehrer: That's unfortunate. I want to touch two things before we run out of time. Note to Chris Quinn, the former New York City Council speaker who's supposed to be our next guest, just be patient for another couple of minutes. There's a trend with this AI and other pressures on the entry-level job market affecting white collar entry-level jobs so dramatically. There's a trend toward people questioning the value of a college degree at all with what we just said, and as expensive as it's become for so many people. Part of that trend is toward people saying, "Go learn a trade instead."

I wonder if you've reported on this at all, because that might work for a certain number of people. Maybe it will work for a lot more people than have thought about that in the past as an alternative to college, who assumed college would be their path. There are only a finite number of jobs for plumbers and auto mechanics, et cetera, as well. Do you have anything on the, "Go learn a trade instead"?

Lindsay Ellis: Several of my colleagues have done deeper reporting on this than I have. If you're curious, I would read Te-Ping Chen and Allison Poley's work in The Wall Street Journal. They've done a lot about this transition. I think there is a move among some, "Can I AI-proof myself by learning a trade and getting into spaces that aren't so reliant on white collar work?"

There are trade-offs to that certainly. Number one, it is hard on your body and that is a real difficulty, especially over time. The kind of work you can do at 22 might not be the same 20, 30 years out.

Brian Lehrer: Will it be intellectually and emotionally satisfying to you like the white collar job you might have thought you were headed for?

Lindsay Ellis: Certainly. The other two core pieces of this too is it depends on where you are in your career. If you've already gone to college or grad school and taken on a significant amount of debt for that, there are different calculations to be making with earning potential and upward mobility.

The other piece of this, and I will follow up with an exact citation after we get off the phone, but I was reading some research from a regional fed research team that suggested that it is difficult for entry-level white collar workers or entry-level workers with college degrees to find work. That is absolutely happening and it is much more challenging now. The firing rates for those with degrees versus entry-level workers with a high school diploma and not a college diploma, you are less likely to be laid off if you have that college degree. There's also the stability consideration to be made as well.

Brian Lehrer: That actually leads right into the last thing that I wanted to bring up, and this actually starts with a clip of the Chair of the Federal Reserve Board, Jerome Powell, speaking after the Fed's latest decision to hold interest rates steady. Here's 36 seconds of what he said. Talk about being in the weeds, we'll translate this into regular English after he's done.

Jerome Powell: The thing that I think a good number of people on the committee are concerned about is just the very, very low level of job creation. If you adjust what has been the trend job creation over the past, let's say, six months, if you adjust that for what we think our staff thinks is the overstatement due to over-counting, effectively, there's zero net job creation in the private sector. Actually, that looks like that's about what the economy needs in terms of dealing with very, very low, nonexistent, really, growth in the labor force, which of course, we've never had in our history.

Brian Lehrer: Lindsay Ellis from The Wall Street Journal, in our last 30 seconds or so, can you explain or do you even understand what he means by zero net job creation in the private sector is what the economy needs? He's talking about low job creation but also low levels of laying people off. What does he mean by that? Can that really be spun as a good thing? Then we're done.

Lindsay Ellis: I would tap in my economics reporter colleagues for the real Fed translation speak. A few things that stood out to me there when he was discussing the net lower number of workers. I used to cover higher education and there was an intense fear of 2026 as an enrollment cliff because it was 18 years after the 2008 financial crisis and a lot of childbirth rates declined there. There was a smaller volume of 18-year-olds who would be enrolling in higher education institution.

When you couple that with immigration trends, we are operating in an environment where there may well be fewer people, 18 and up, with college degrees. for the number of positions that exist in the US. That is probably where I will be researching and talking to my colleagues about later on as I'm trying to do some Fed translation for you.

Brian Lehrer: Lindsay Ellis, translating, writing, reporting, talking as a Wall Street Journal reporter. Thank you so much-

Lindsay Ellis: Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: -for illuminating so much with us and talking to our listeners.

Lindsay Ellis: Thanks to your listeners, too, for such great questions. This was really interesting.

 

Copyright © 2026 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.