The AI-related leadership that’s only five years away

AI is eliminating entry-level roles that traditionally shaped the next generation of managers – creating an imminent leadership crisis.
Five key actions can safeguard human input in the workplace and transform entry-level production into evaluation and analysis.
How promising ideas become scalable impact is a key focus at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions, also known as ‘Summer Davos’, in China from 23-25 June.

There’s a talent problem hiding in plain sight. It doesn’t show up in this quarter’s earnings call. It won’t surface in next year’s workforce plan. But if organizations don’t start treating it like a design flaw now, they’ll run into a leadership wall within the next five years.

For all its power to make us more productive, AI is systematically reshaping the entry-level experience that traditionally trained the next generation of leaders.

We’re already seeing the market signals. Harvard University research indicates junior employment has fallen 9%, with entry-level hiring dipping 80% per quarter since 2023, at organizations adopting generative AI. ZipRecruiter’s 2026 Graduate Report found the share of entry-level jobs dropped to 38.6% at the start of 2026, down from over 44% three years ago.

Starter tasks are being automated or pushed upward, creating workload strain in the layers above that will become a clog in the leadership pipeline.

The ‘end’ of grunt work?

Entry-level roles have never been only about output. They are, in a very real sense, structured learning environments.

The junior analyst who builds the model manually develops an intuition for when the model is wrong. The new hire who drafts the memo and gets it marked up learns judgement by seeing their thinking challenged. The new college graduate who handles the messy client situation builds emotional resilience that no training course can replicate.

Yet addressing AI’s impact on early careers, the World Economic Forum paints a picture of a…

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