The Future of Jobs : From Forced Synthesis to Survival Entrepreneurship

After graduating from high school during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and now with AI disrupting the workforce, young graduates can’t seem to catch a break. Many niches are disappearing, forcing graduates to set aside their specialist industries and integrate with those that remain. Graduates who’ve earned specialty degrees, formed during the peak of workforce diversification, have entered the workforce with varied levels of skill irrelevance. Three industries—health care & social assistance, government, and leisure & hospitality—represented almost 75% of all jobs added in the last 12 months. Many jobs now require 2-3 years of experience or exist in fields requiring no experience, like hospitality. Graduates are constantly upskilling to overcome this entry barrier and avoid obsolescence in a labour market where AI continually raises the bar. While recessions often reduce job diversity, this AI-driven downturn may mean many of these jobs do not return. Graduates must now grieve the loss of guaranteed programs or entry-level positions awaiting them after graduation. In 2025, only 30% of graduates found jobs in their field, and entry-level roles saw an average decrease in hiring rates of 73.4%. Consequently, graduates are being forced into a “synthesis survival mode.”

When politicians discuss employment growth or unemployment, the story often lost is the types of jobs lost or replaced, or people forced to relocate for survival in a capitalist system that no longer serves them. After spending tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of young adulthood gaining an education and job-specific skills, being forced to abandon them for survival is not only a waste of a system meant to promise futures, but also a cruelly confusing way to begin adult life for many today. Filled with passion for a career, as sold to us, only to end up working in a role lacking skills from all of their hard-earned specialty. 52% of recent four-year college graduates are underemployed a year after they graduate, leading to wage penalties that persist for decades. So - how could young people not feel dispossessed?  

So, what does the future of the workforce look like? A Universal Basic Income Utopia remains a general idea, so how will the workforce really absorb the changes ahead? The World Economic Forum projects that AI will create 133 million new vacancies by 2030. Yet, while AI capital owners capture $13 trillion in new wealth, 133 million displaced workers will fight just to earn a living. Governments are currently unable to support these people or manage the fallout of such drastic unemployment. So, where will the affected workers go? Primarily into low-entry roles in trades or hospitality, or toward self-employment.

As automation advances, income inequality between wealthy individuals and skilled labourers will likely increase. By 2030, industry-wide operating costs could fall by 10% to 15%, boosting profits for capital owners while reducing labour’s share of national income. This could create a future two-tier economy with no middle class. Meanwhile, the creator economy and entrepreneurial e-commerce companies/brands will only continue to grow. By 2029, eCommerce will reach 3.9 billion people, representing 49% exponential growth in shoppers compared to 2025.. These two industries will be the future of the workforce.

Selling online will be essential for those seeking to escape the trappings of potential labour-share reductions. Such a threat of income inequality will push people into entrepreneurship who otherwise wouldn't choose it, but only the lucky few can successfully navigate it in the long term, given the challenges of funding and long-term business survival. An automation-based business model will define the style of entrepreneurship, with individuals relying on asset-light models and networks, and service-based businesses twice as likely to survive as product-based businesses. Consulting, coaching, and gig work, with digital products and automated services, will define new entrepreneurship post-AI integration. The Economist went so far as to publish a piece on August 11, 2025, titled “How AI Could Create the First One-Person Unicorn,” capturing an emerging reality: artificial intelligence is enabling entirely new modes of entrepreneurship, where the dream of building a billion-dollar company as a solo founder is no longer science fiction.

While such restructuring is frightening for individuals entering the workforce today or halfway through their working lives, as the modern workforce continues to restructure, there is comfort in knowing that the areas projected to grow are ahead of us. We can see it. Whether or not one had the goal of becoming the first one-person unicorn, knowing where opportunities for yourself will be is essential for feeling hopeful. More importantly, you are not alone in this sense of loss. Loss of knowing what the future looks like for you.

References

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2. Ravio, "Early Career Hiring Is Down 73% – Here's Why It's Time to Redesign Entry-Level Roles for the AI Era," Ravio (blog), 2025, https://ravio.com/blog/early-career-hiring.

3. Cengage Group, "2025 Graduate Employability Report," news release, September 9, 2025, https://www.cengagegroup.com/news/press-releases/2025/cengage-group-2025-employability-report/.

4. Ravio, "Early Career Hiring."

5. Gusto, "Slowed Hiring in White Collar Jobs Is Driving GenZ Toward Skilled Trades," Gusto (blog), June 12, 2025, https://gusto.com/company-news/skilled-trade-workers-2024.

6. Burning Glass Institute and Strada Institute, Talent Disrupted: College Graduates, Underemployment, and the Way Forward (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2024), https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2025/aug/jobs-degrees-underemployed-college-graduates-have.

7. World Economic Forum, The Future of Jobs Report 2018, accessed via CNBC, "A.I. and Robotics Will Create Almost 60 Million More Jobs Than They Destroy by 2022, Report Says," September 17, 2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/17/wef-machines-are-going-to-perform-more-tasks-than-humans-by-2025.html.

8. McKinsey Global Institute, "Modelling the Global Economic Impact of AI," McKinsey & Company, September 4, 2018, https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/artificial-intelligence/notes-from-the-ai-frontier-modeling-the-impact-of-ai-on-the-world-economy.

9. McKinsey Global Institute, "Modelling the Global Economic Impact of AI."

10. Fortunately, "20+ Small Business Failure Statistics to Know in 2025," January 3, 2025, https://fortunly.com/statistics/small-business-failure-statistics/; PayCompass, "The Hard Truth About Business Survival Rates," May 23, 2025, https://paycompass.com/blog/business-survival-rates/.

11. Web and Crafts, "E-Commerce Statistics 2026: Key Trends, Growth Insights," 2025, https://webandcrafts.com/blog/ecommerce-statistics.

12. The Economist, "How AI Could Create the First One-Person Unicorn," August 11, 2025.