Over the past few months, we’ve had more than a few conversations that have stayed with us. Not with clients. Not with candidates. With parents.
People who’ve come to us, sometimes slightly sheepishly, asking for advice not for themselves, but for their son or daughter who is trying, really trying, to get their foot in the door of the working world and finding it firmly shut. Young people who have done everything right, got their grades, showed up, built their CV, and are now hearing nothing back, or competing against hundreds of applicants for positions that would once have been readily available to someone starting out.
This isn’t anecdotal. The data confirms what we’re seeing on the ground. And as a business built on relationships, transparency and a genuine belief in people, we think it’s time to say something.
What the numbers are telling us
Entry-level job postings in the UK have fallen by roughly a third since ChatGPT launched in late 2022, a timeline that maps uncomfortably onto the rise of AI tools in the workplace. National records show the longest sustained drop in job postings since records began, surpassing even the financial crisis. Total UK vacancies were down 54,000 in early 2026, with 2.5 unemployed people chasing every single vacancy.
In 2024, 1.2 million UK graduates competed for fewer than 17,000 entry-level positions. Graduate job listings received an average of 140 applications, the highest in 30 years and a 50% jump from 2023. Graduate hiring fell 8% year on year in 2025, with a further 7% reduction forecast for the year ahead.
The roles disappearing are not abstract. Finance, HR, administration, customer service, operations, compliance, the very sectors Ferox Partners operates across. Major firms including KPMG, Deloitte, PwC and EY are hiring hundreds fewer graduates, using AI to handle the routine work that once gave young people their start. And in doing so, they are quietly dismantling the training ground that built every mid-level and senior professional working today.
Then there is the cost pressure that rarely gets spoken about plainly. The National Living Wage rose to £12.21 an hour in April 2025, and the rate for 18 to 20-year-olds jumped 16% in a single year. On the surface that is a good thing, and in many ways it is. But it has had an unintended consequence that we see playing out in hiring decisions every week. When the salary gap between a school or university leaver and a candidate with two years of relevant experience is only £2,000 to £3,000 a year, the business case for taking a chance on
someone untested becomes very hard to make internally. Why hire green when you can hire experienced for marginally more? It is a question more hiring managers are asking, and the honest answer is that right now, many of them are choosing not to. The policy designed to protect young workers has, as an unintended side effect, made some employers think twice about hiring them at all.
The career ladder is losing its bottom rungs
Every recruiter working with real people knows this instinctively: you cannot skip the beginning.
Junior roles are where people learn to work. How to navigate a team. How to read a room. How to develop judgment. These things are earned through presence and practice, not coursework. Researchers at King’s College London have warned that removing junior roles breaks the traditional skills pipeline. Lord Wolfson of Next, one of Britain’s biggest employers, has warned of a dramatic decline in entry-level opportunities. LinkedIn’s Head of Work has said publicly that AI is breaking the career ladders that historically launched careers.
The short-term cost saving will become a very long-term talent problem. You cannot build a leadership pipeline without first building a foundation.
A generation at genuine risk
The British Chambers of Commerce forecast youth unemployment rising to 17% in the UK this year. Close to one million people aged 16 to 24 were out of work and not in any form of education or training at the start of 2025, a group that Employment Minister Alison McGovern described as “effectively on the scrapheap” when speaking to Parliament. In mid-2024, youth unemployment hit 14.2%, its highest since the pandemic, with over 96,000 recent graduates unable to find work matching their qualifications.
The Health Foundation reports that the proportion of young people out of work and out of education who are also dealing with a health condition that limits their ability to work rose from 26% to 44% between 2015 and 2025. These are not lazy young people. These are young people becoming disengaged and unwell in a labour market that increasingly has no place for them.
If we automate the entry point, where exactly do we expect the next generation to go?
What we believe businesses can do right now
We are not anti-AI at Ferox Partners. We use it ourselves. But we use it alongside people, not instead of them.
Redesign junior roles rather than delete them. A junior working alongside AI tools at 22 is an exceptional mid-level hire at 27. That is not a compromise. It is the future of work.
Invest in apprenticeships and graduate programmes. They are not charity. They are talent pipelines. Apprentice hiring grew 8% in 2025 while everything else fell. The businesses building their own talent now will win the decade.
Think about what you are really saving. The cost of not hiring juniors compounds. Skills gaps, succession problems, over-reliance on expensive contractors. The numbers look tidy now and painful in five years’ time.
Work with recruiters who understand people, not just CVs. At Ferox Partners we meet every candidate in person. A young person with limited experience but strong character, curiosity and coachability is a better long-term investment than a perfect CV that needs no development.
And if you are a parent or a young person reading this
You didn’t do something wrong. The market is genuinely harder. But there are things you can do.
Use your network, and do it directly. Think about every person in your professional circle: former colleagues, clients, school parents, friends who run businesses. Have you actually asked any of them whether they could offer your child a week of work experience, a short internship, or an introduction? Most people want to help. They just need to be asked clearly and specifically. A vague “let me know if anything comes up” goes nowhere. A direct, honest ask is a very different conversation.
For young people: send those messages yourself. A short, well-written message to someone in your network, your university’s alumni community, or a business you admire, asking for a conversation or a short placement, will put you ahead of the thousands who only apply through job boards. A respectful, direct approach is rarely received badly.
Work experience, internships and apprenticeships are not consolation prizes. In this market, they are currency. Even a week in an office gives you something most applicants don’t have: proof that you have been in a real working environment and someone trusted you enough to let you in. That is not a small thing when a hiring manager is looking at 140 CVs. If you are not sure where to start, Kaplan Apprenticeships is a strong place to explore options across a wide range of sectors.
Any experience is relevant experience. Part-time work, volunteering, running a student society, managing social media for a local charity. These are evidence of reliability and initiative. Frame them that way.
It may feel marginal. It isn’t. In a market this competitive, that one extra thing, a week of shadowing, a reference from someone who knows you professionally, is often what tips the decision. The job board is not the only door. Right now, it is just the most crowded one.
A final thought
What the parents coming to us are describing is not a skills problem or a generational attitude problem. It is a structural problem, and it requires a structural response.
AI is not going away. Nor should it. But the businesses that will thrive through this transition are the ones that treat technological progress as something to be shaped by human values, not something that simply happens to people while we balance the books.
At Ferox Partners, our purpose has always been people first. The next generation of talent deserves a genuine shot. We would encourage every business we work with to think carefully, and honestly, about the role they play in giving them one.
If you are an employer thinking about entry-level hiring, or a candidate navigating a market that feels stacked against you, we would love to have that conversation. Get in touch with the Ferox Partners team.
