Gen Z in the US Turns to Entrepreneurship as AI Removes the Bottom Rungs

For some members of Gen Z, a career no longer starts with an internship or a junior position. Because of a weak labor market and the rapid adoption of AI, young professionals in the US are looking straight at starting their own businesses. Instead of the familiar ladder, where you get routine tasks first and more responsibility later, they see a nearly empty bottom floor. Companies are hiring more cautiously, and the functions where newcomers used to learn are increasingly being automated. In this situation, entrepreneurship stops being a "someday" dream and becomes a fallback, and sometimes the main route into a profession.

Ashley Terrell, a 2024 graduate of the University of Hawaii, is a telling example. She expected to find a job in marketing, possibly at a tech company. She had a business administration degree and experience doing student marketing work for Red Bull, a perfectly reasonable starting kit. But after months of applications, she received only one offer: to work in the power tools department at Home Depot. It was a cold shower for her: she kept searching for jobs literally every day, including during her shifts. In her perception, she was competing not only with other candidates but also with employers' belief that marketing tasks can be handled by generative tools.

The problem is bigger than one unlucky story. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the hiring rate has dropped to its lowest level since 2020. Amid an uncertain economy, workers of all ages feel the pressure, but Gen Z looks at its prospects more gloomily than anyone else.

Entry-level positions proved the most vulnerable: the very roles through which graduates and young professionals without a long résumé usually enter office work. These are assistants, coordinators, junior analysts, and content and marketing assistants: work with many templated, repeatable tasks, which now often becomes the first target for automation. AI does not necessarily replace a person entirely, but it cuts the number of positions, redistributes duties, and raises expectations for candidates from the very start.

The shift in requirements for "entry-level" jobs makes things worse. Even where a role is formally junior, employers want candidates to bring ready-made case studies, an understanding of analytics, fluency with several digital tools, and the ability to deliver measurable results right away. In other words, the market asks for experience from those who have yet to gain it. Internships and long in-house training used to bridge this gap. Now businesses more often prefer to hire one stronger generalist and amplify them with AI services rather than take on several newcomers and spend a long time developing them. For graduates, this means a tougher, costlier, and psychologically less stable entry into the profession.

As a result, some of Gen Z is rethinking the very logic of a career. Where it used to be necessary to "get into the industry" through a junior role, some now prefer to sell their services themselves from the start: running marketing for small businesses, launching micro-studios, consulting, assembling freelance projects, or turning a personal brand into a source of orders. This path is riskier, but it offers what stalled hiring does not: a chance to show results faster, build a portfolio, and not wait for approval from a corporate funnel.

Paradoxically, the same AI tools that cut the number of entry-level jobs also make it cheaper to start a small business: they help with design, copywriting, analytics, and operations.

The main takeaway is not that corporate careers are disappearing, but that their entry threshold is changing faster than universities and graduates can adapt. For employers, this is a warning: if companies stop growing newcomers, they risk losing an entire generation of future specialists and managers. For young people, the signal is different: relying only on a degree and the standard junior track no longer works as a guaranteed scenario. In a market where AI is eroding the lower rungs of the career ladder, value shifts toward independence, learning speed, and the ability to create work for yourself.