TL;DR

Survation polled 1,001 UK businesses for Lancaster University’s Work Foundation and found 36% have reduced entry-level vacancies over the past year. Among the largest employers, six in ten attribute the reduction to AI and automation. Nearly three quarters of all respondents say breaking into work is harder now than it was five years ago.

The gradient by employer size

The headline figure hides a steep split. Small businesses reported cuts at 24%. Medium-sized employers came in at 48%, and large ones at 46% — roughly double the small-firm rate either way. Attribution follows the same curve, only more sharply: a quarter of small firms named AI and automation as the cause, against roughly six in ten of the biggest.

That gradient matters more than the average. Automating a junior workload requires the volume and the process standardisation that scale provides, which is precisely why the effect concentrates where graduate schemes have historically lived.

Work Foundation director Ben Harrison said young people face one of the harshest labour markets in years, competing hard for a shrinking pool of first jobs. The fieldwork ran across a fortnight in May, so it predates this autumn’s recruitment round.

Where it sits in the run of evidence

This is the third employer-side dataset in a week. On Monday, Resultsense covered LSE research arguing measured AI productivity gains rest on 133,000 fewer people in work. Last week Hays posted its first annual loss since 2003 and pointed at AI. Adzuna counted graduate-seeking adverts down by almost half year on year in July.

The official picture agrees. Vacancies over the three months to July fell to 707,000, a floor last seen in spring 2021. More than a million 16 to 24-year-olds were outside education, work or training in the first quarter — the worst reading since 2013. Fresh figures land on Thursday.

Looking forward

The CBI has asked the Chancellor to unwind part of the payroll tax rise at October’s Budget and ease planned employment law changes, framing both as youth unemployment measures. That argument now has survey data behind it, though the data also points at a cause tax policy cannot reach. For UK employers, the practical risk is a hollow middle: automate the trainee tier now, and there is no one qualified to promote in five years.