Companies Adopting AI Are Hiring More People, They Just Aren’t Hiring You Yet
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A new study answers one of the biggest open questions about AI and jobs, and the answer comes with a catch. Companies that adopt AI are hiring more people overall than companies that don’t. Bharat Chandar of Stanford University and Bouke Klein Teeselink of King’s College London released the paper today, built on 1.25 billion job postings and 154 million employment records across 41 countries from January 2021 through March 2026.
At AI-adopting companies, senior employment rose 6.7% over 5 years. Junior employment at those same companies fell 3% over the same period. Even with total hiring up, the junior share of the workforce dropped 1.9 percentage points. This pattern showed up broadly, in countries as different as Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and the UK, so it isn’t a story confined to the U.S. labor market.
Computer and mathematical roles, among the jobs most exposed to AI, tell the same story from the other direction. Employment in those roles actually rose 0.8 percentage points at AI-adopting companies, and it tilted toward senior workers there too. The researchers put it plainly: “AI is labor saving for junior workers and labor expanding for seniors in exposed occupations.” They also noted that “junior employment losses run somewhat deeper in richer and more digitized economies,” meaning the countries furthest along in AI adoption are seeing the sharpest version of this split.
A separate figure reinforces the pattern. The Stanford Digital Economy Lab reported in an August update, using data through June 2026, that employment among 22- to 25-year-olds in highly AI-exposed jobs sits 19% below where it would be if it had tracked with less-exposed roles, up from a 15% gap in a July 2025 reading. The lab attributes this mainly to companies hiring fewer young workers, not to layoffs of the ones already on staff. Pew Research Center has separately found that young adults in the U.S. are increasingly worried about AI costing them job opportunities.
The headline most people will repeat is that AI adopters are adding jobs. The number that should change how you plan is the 1.9-point drop in junior share. Companies aren’t cutting the bottom of the org chart out of malice. The work a first-year analyst used to do is the work AI now handles cleanly, and a senior person paired with AI can cover ground that used to require a team underneath them. The rational short-term move is to hire the senior person and skip the junior one.
The problem shows up later. The junior job is how someone becomes the senior person, and a company that spends 5 years thinning out its entry level won’t have a mid-level bench in year 6. Companies would be better off redesigning entry-level roles around reviewing and directing AI output than eliminating the roles and assuming experienced talent will always be available to hire. If your own pipeline for future managers has quietly gone empty, talk to us about hiring and we’ll help you rebuild it deliberately instead of by accident.
For anyone 22 to 25 trying to break in right now, the 19% gap is real, and it isn’t a personal failing. The counter-move is getting to the kind of work AI can’t do alone, which means judgment calls, client contact, and owning an outcome, and doing it faster than the last generation had to. This is a harder path to walk without a foothold, which is part of why the seasonal hiring window below is worth taking seriously if you’re job hunting right now, entry-level roles or otherwise.
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Seasonal Hiring Is Already Underway, Even Though October Gets the Attention
If you’re planning to start your holiday job search in November, the data says you’re already behind. Monster’s Seasonal Hiring Index 2026 analyzed seasonal job postings from August through December in both 2024 and 2025, and the pattern repeats both years: hiring takes off in September, peaks in October, and drops sharply in November.
The September jump is the headline number. Seasonal posting activity rose 44% from August to September in 2025. Strip out delivery and driving jobs, the categories that tend to dominate this conversation, and September activity was still 31% above August. From September to October, postings grew only another 3.6%, meaning most of the year’s seasonal hiring ramp has already happened by the time October arrives. September and October together accounted for nearly half of all seasonal posting activity across the entire 5-month window, in both years measured. Then November brings a roughly 24% drop from the October peak, again consistent across both years.
Here’s the part most job seekers get wrong. Fewer than 3% of seasonal postings in any month of 2025 contained words like “seasonal,” “holiday,” “temporary,” or “Christmas” in the job title. Employers mostly post these roles under their regular titles, so a seasonal cashier opening usually just reads “Cashier.” Monster’s own report puts it directly: “that means a seasonal opening can be hiding among jobs that, by title alone, look like ordinary year-round positions.”
The 13 most active seasonal titles in 2025 were Delivery Driver, Retail Sales Associate, Intern, Cashier, Tax Associate, Beauty Advisor, Tax Expert, Package Handler, Retail Stocker, Retail Associate, Sales Intern, Stock Associate, and Store Associate. Seasonal work extends well past retail into delivery, warehouse and logistics, internships, tax and accounting, and hospitality, and different categories follow different calendars. Summer hospitality and recreation roles peaked in August, tax and internship postings picked up in the fall, and some camps recruit 5 to 7 months ahead of their season.
Monster’s advice for job seekers comes down to 5 moves: start searching in September instead of November, search by the specific work you want instead of the word “seasonal,” set alerts for multiple title variations, look beyond retail, and apply as soon as you find a fit.
The 3% figure is the one I’d want every job seeker to hear. Typing “seasonal” into a job board and scrolling through the results shows a tiny slice of what’s posted. Search the title of the actual job instead. The September ramp also matches what I see from the employer side. Companies that wait until the busy season hits to post compete for whoever’s left, and the ones that fill their seasonal roles well recruit before they feel the pinch. For most of these categories, September is on time, not early. If you’re an employer building out your own seasonal team, explore our staffing services and get ahead of the rush instead of scrambling through it.
What This Means for Your Hiring and Job Search
Two different stories this week point to the same lesson: timing and positioning matter more than they used to. Entry-level candidates are competing in a market where AI-adopting companies are quietly raising the bar for a first hire, and seasonal candidates are competing in a hiring window that’s already closing by the time most people start looking. Whether you’re building a team or building a career, acting a month earlier than feels necessary is turning into the difference that counts.
If your entry-level pipeline needs rebuilding or your seasonal staffing plan needs to move faster, talk to us about hiring and we’ll help you get ahead of both problems. And if you’re the one searching, whether for a first professional role or a seasonal opening, see what’s open right now before the window narrows further.
