There have been warnings that artificial intelligence (AI) is affecting the new recruitment market f..

There have been warnings that artificial intelligence (AI) is affecting the new recruitment market first. In particular, it is pointed out that the demand for "first jobs" to start their careers is decreasing for young people who just graduated from college.

According to Reuters on the 12th (local time), Singapore's President Tarman Shanmugaratnam said at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank annual meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, "We have a problem that we need to solve very quickly. Demand is decreasing on the first ladder of employment, the first job after graduating from college." "The evidence is already very clear and most evident in industries most exposed to AI," he stressed.

In fact, there is a gap according to career in the US recruitment market. According to Hiering Lab, a research organization of job-seeking platform Indid, the U.S. software developer recruitment announcement has increased by about 15% in the first six months of this year since the end of February last year when the AI coding tool "Claude Code" was released. This is in contrast to a 7% decline in job openings in the U.S. during the same period.

The recovery of developer recruitment was concentrated at the senior level. Among the developer recruitment announcements that increased from May last year to May this year, 71% were senior-level, and 37% included AI in their job names. Although the number of developers is increasing recently, the manpower that companies want is concentrated on developers with experience and AI utilization capabilities.

A similar trend appeared in the entire labor market. According to the IndyD count, senior-level job postings increased 14.7% in May this year from the same month last year, but new-level job postings decreased 7.5%. Compared to January 2025, senior-level announcements increased by 13.5%, while new employees decreased by 6.3%. In the software development field, 69.3% of all job openings in the first quarter of this year were senior-level, and only 4.5% of new employees were new.

The employment of young developers has also decreased. According to the "2026 AI Index" of Stanford University's Center for Human-Centered AI Research (HAI), the employment of software developers aged 22 to 25 in the United States has decreased by about 20% since 2024. On the other hand, employment has increased in most older developers groups.

A separate study by Stanford University's Digital Economy Research Institute also found that the employment of young people aged 22 to 25 was relatively sluggish in occupations with high AI exposure. The researchers analyzed that the employment of young workers in occupations with high AI exposure was 19% lower than when the trend was not the same.

However, it is difficult to blame AI for all the decline in new jobs. Indeed suggested that several factors may have worked together, including the spread of remote work, high interest rates, and adjustments to companies' workforce after over-employment during COVID-19. Research shows that the decrease in job openings in jobs with high AI exposure also began before the end of 2022 when ChatGPT appeared.

Software developer job postings are also still 27.5% less than in February 2020, before COVID-19, despite the recent rebound. Indeed analyzed that the recent increase in developer recruitment has increased the demand for skilled workers who can use AI, but evaluated that it is difficult to see it as a recovery in hiring across the software industry.

President Shanmugaratnam also warned of the possibility of AI widening the gap between countries. He emphasized the need to avoid situations in which the impact of AI creates a "new gap" between developed and developing countries.