Parents Are Scared of AI. Nobody’s Warning Them About This (Degree Free #206)
Degree Free
The episode examines the 42.5% underemployment rate among recent college graduates and challenges the narrative that AI is the primary cause of job instability. The hosts argue
Key takeaways
- Recent graduate underemployment has hit 42.5%, marking the highest percentage since 2020.
- The hosts argue that colleges blame AI to avoid admitting their educational products are becoming archaic and ineffective.
Main topics
- Gen Z underemployment
- AI's impact on labor
Notable quotes
Gen Z blames AI for the job market. Well, Gen Z college grads.
Conclusion
The episode highlights that while the job market is shifting due to AI
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) Welcome back. Let's kick it off strong. Gen Z blames AI for the job market. Well, Gen Z college grads. It's Speaker 1 (0:08) always the robots. It's never the paper. Now, underemployment for recent grads hit 42.5%. So we're basically talking about half of grads are underemployed. This is now the highest percentage since 2020. And this is very important because many of these underemployed grads will still be underemployed 10 years later. This, I think, is a really good example, too, of how strategic entry-level work is incredibly important and that if your child goes to college, it is more difficult for them to get that strategic entry-level work because so many people are not wanting to hire Gen Z grads. Again, we talk about the Intelligent.com survey. That really tells a lot about where hiring managers are at mentally and then also managers just as far as who they're looking for, who they're going to hire. A lot of it is because grads are just really high risk because they are way more likely to turn. And they expect way higher than their skill set. They expect to earn way higher than their skill set, which, to be perfectly frank, is very little when you come out of college. It's very little to none. Many undergrads don't work while they're in college. So the reason that this matters so much, and again, I know this is an unpopular point to make, but the underemployment numbers didn't really move after the AI tools came on the scene. This was already a problem, and it's still a problem, and it really hasn't. been that dramatically impacted by AI. And this is one of those things where I think this is inconvenient. This is very much inconvenient for the colleges because they love to blame the robots because honestly, they're terrified of AI. Colleges are terrified of AI because they've lost control of their campuses in general with kids just using AI to accomplish all their coursework. And then they're actively trying to keep them from using it, but then they're also using it to do their own work and then also to catch them using AI. They really just don't know what's going on. They don't know what the kids need to learn about AI to go out into the workforce. But also, I think ultimately, the reason that academia is so afraid of AI is because it's really showing how archaic the college system is. It's also showing young people earlier that they don't need to go to college for most things. And I think that is really inconvenient. So they're afraid of it for that reason. I think that's a lot of the reason of the colleges, you know, all these academics writing. hit pieces, think pieces about AI is because they're just afraid for their own jobs, which makes sense because the funding's cut and they're all getting laid off. So they're worried about their jobs. So they're comfortable blaming AI because that's better than blaming themselves for their own failures and the fact that their product is not good and the fact that their product is not helping young people. So I think that that's a huge thing. The robots are ruining everything is much easier to stomach and makes them feel probably better than, oh, actually, this paper we're selling to kids is. pretty much worthless and most of them don't need to get good work and most of them shouldn't be here at all. I Speaker 2 (2:52) wanted to back up a little bit and talk about the underemployment 10 years later, or rather, that's not the, this is completely from memory, but it rhymes with a statistic that I remember when I was in college about the amount of money that you take for your first job is very indicative, is like the number one indicator of your financial success. or rather of the amount of money you'll make if you stay in a career, in that career, over your life, basically that first job really matters. And so I'm making up the numbers here, but basically if you take a job that was $30,000 a year, the chances of you 10 years later, you know, making $200,000 is pretty low just because you have to go and get a 6 to 7x in that 10-year span. Whereas if you take a job that is $90,000 a year, granted, you know, very difficult to find. Sure. All that. But if but if possible, and you did, the jump is only is only a double or a triple from there. And so I think that that rhymes with what you're saying here regarding AI and the job market now. And it being blamed for the underemployment or even for the unemployment. I think a large portion of that has to do with the way that these top tier frontier model companies did their advertising. And if you look at the way a few months ago, the way that Anthropic advertised and marketed their frontier model mythos and basically saying it's going to tear down the internet. everything's going to come to a standstill. We must give this to 10 companies so that they can secure the internet and secure your life and everything like that. Otherwise, it's going to be Skynet. If you look at even before that, they were saying, oh, all of the software engineer jobs are going to be gone. Speaker 1 (4:56) In Speaker 2 (4:57) six months, there's going to be no more software engineers. Then six months came and then they're like, in six months, there's going to be no more software engineers. And then six months came and they'd be like. In six months, there's going to be no more software engineers. And then they've been saying that for like four years now. Yeah. Speaker 1 (5:11) And now interlabeled positions are like up 18 % or something. Right. Speaker 2 (5:15) And so all of these places that are saying that, if you go to their careers page, how much are they paying software engineers? $200,000 a year. So much money. What? Yeah. Like these companies themselves, like go to Anthropix page right now, whenever this comes out, I think this is actually going to come out in a few months too. So like. because we run a little bit of a backlog. And so I promise you. go to their page. There's a software engineer role on it right now. They're making up stuff to make the jokes work. They're making it, they're marketing it. And now you see the rollback in time. They're like, oh, well, it's not going to destroy jobs. It's going to be a net positive. And they're doing all this now because they got all this backlash from all these data centers, realizing now that like, hey, you Speaker 1 (6:04) need Speaker 2 (6:04) public opinion on your side to build all of the data centers. necessary to do all these things. And so it's like, no, it's not going to destroy jobs. It's going to create jobs. What are we talking about? I don't know where you would have gotten the idea that it was going to destroy jobs. Well, you told us that. Right, exactly. A lot. And so because they told us that, now all of the people, there can be a ton of cope in the industry and in any industry. And just basically, there's a demon to blame because they named the demon. And it's like, AI is going to take jobs. And so therefore, AI took jobs. And therefore, AI is responsible for my underemployment. AI is responsible for my unemployment, which is like, largely not true. Speaker 1 (6:50) You know what, you do bring up something, though, that I'm sure people are kind of mixing up. Because again, we talked about this, this was a couple years ago. But remember when a ton of something is after COVID, but a ton of HR got laid off. And remember, people were freaking out. oh my gosh, there's all these layoffs, everybody's losing their jobs, but actually not that many people lost their jobs. It was a lot of people that were in HR and people that are in HR, honestly, are just more vocal on the internet. And so they just got more attention because they were just loud. And the same thing happened when there was a ton of funding cut from NGOs and nonprofits that were just honestly sending money around doing nothing. And so a lot of people did lose their jobs, but a lot of those jobs shouldn't have been there to begin with.