AI Poised to Tilt Job Market Leverage Toward Older Workers
Victor Swezey
May 16, 2026
(Bloomberg) -- When it comes to job cuts, older workers are often disproportionately affected. But a new survey of chief executive officers suggests this won’t be a given as companies adopt artificial intelligence.Most Read from BloombergWinners and Losers From Trump and Xi’s Beijing Summit...
finance.yahoo.com
More than 40% of CEOs plan to cut junior roles over the next one to two years and shift the composition of their workforce toward mid-level or senior positions, while only 17% plan to make junior roles a bigger part of the mix, according to a global survey by Oliver Wyman. The numbers are essentially flipped from just a year ago.
“I think the junior level is definitely finding it harder now to enter the workforce,” said John Romeo, who leads the consulting firm’s research arm, the Oliver Wyman Forum. “It’s those mid- and senior-level employees that CEOs are now looking at to drive productivity.”
That’s because of the types of tasks that AI agents are able to perform, from writing code at the level of a junior developer to evaluating sales leads. What the agents can’t do in many fields is make judgment calls using the insight that comes from on-the-job experience, according to labor experts.
Companies are saying, “I need someone who’s actually done this before because her experience, her wisdom, her critical thinking and the fact that she solved these problems makes her much more valuable,” said consultant and lecturer Ravin Jesuthasan, who has written multiple books on the future of work.…
Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI
By Jake Angelo
News Fellow
May 16, 2026
Mustafa Suleyman believes current AI computational power will only accelerate, disrupting every kind of work you do “sitting down at a computer.”
fortune.com
For the back half of the 20th century (what Fortune founder Henry Luce called “The American Century”), MBA and law degree programs were a ticket to a great office job and a path to the American Dream. The 21st century is asking the question: What happens when all those office jobs get automated?
In a conversation with the
Financial Times earlier this year, the CEO of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleyman, delivered another in a series of predictions from AI leaders that white-collar work is on the precipice of a radical transformation thanks to AI. His timeline is 18 months until those law school and MBA grads—and many less-credentialed peers—are out of luck…
CEO of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleyman
