The class of 2025 needs hope amid the march of AI
Let’s talk about the “class of 2025” — the young people who have just finished college and are stepping into a world of work that feels unusually difficult. You may be their parents, uncles, aunts or friends; perhaps you’re a graduate yourself. Either way, there is a shared sense of worry about what comes next. This cohort is entering work at an inflection point we have not seen in decades.
I study the labour markets and the future of work — here are five conversations to have with those in the class of 2025.
First conversation: we owe them honesty. It is a tough labour market. The UK economy is neither in recession nor meaningful growth, and many companies are holding back on hiring. Entry-level roles are scarce, and those who do have a job are sticking to it, so natural turnover is at a historic low. Many of us graduated into recessions or periods of low growth. We remember how disheartening and unfair that felt. But acknowledging that reality is respectful and necessary. Naming the reality doesn’t mean giving up hope — it means avoiding false reassurance, which young people can sense immediately.
But — and this is the second conversation — something deeper and more profound is under way. The class of 2025 is the first cohort to enter the job market as generative AI is fundamentally reshaping work. Every chief executive I speak with has generative AI at the top of their agenda, with significant investments already made and expectations of productivity gains to follow. Those productivity gains largely come from two sources: increasing value by supporting existing employees to be more productive, or reducing costs by slowing recruitment.
“It turns out that this technology shift affects graduates in significant ways
Here is the third conversation: it turns out this technology shift affects graduates in especially significant ways. For decades, a degree reliably delivered an early-career advantage that went on to uplift income across a whole lifetime. A degree helped you to excel in graduate entry tasks: reading documents, drafting reports, analysing data, spotting patterns — the very tasks generative AI now performs at astonishing accuracy and speed. That’s why sectors that historically recruited graduates in large numbers — accounting, for example — have reduced their intake. The landscape of work is transforming at the very time the class of 2025 is entering the workplace.
And yet, despite the challenges, it’s imperative that this class of 2025 gets a chance to work. That is why the fourth conversation is so central: it’s about their experience of work and what they imagine working will be like for them. My own research on working lives has taught me that our early experiences of work matter enormously. Not because these first jobs define a life; they rarely do. They are the moments when lifetime friendships are created, when new skills are built, when confidence grows.
I’ve heard people talk about the unexpected early job that taught them resilience, the small organisation where they learnt to do everything, the side project that became a calling. These beginnings often feel accidental at the time, yet they turn out to be the places where judgment, taste, discernment and the deeply human skills of listening and supporting others begin to form. The very skills that form the core of human experience, and the skills that most clearly distinguish us from generative AI.
In this period of transition we are beginning to realise you don’t have to be on a traditional graduate programme to build a great career; you only have to begin. The route into work may look different from what graduates expected. They may take a short-term contract, a temporary assignment or a role adjacent to their preferred field. These “side doors” shouldn’t be seen as compromises. They are footholds, and often the beginning of surprisingly rich careers.
And that leads us to the fifth conversation: no one has to navigate this alone. In these unpredictable times, opportunities will emerge not just from qualifications, but from communities around them. These communities can take many forms — it could be friends who want to start something, peers who have contacts that reach out, mentors who are willing to share their experience. These relationships offer guidance, encouragement, introductions and a sense of belonging. In a market as volatile as this one, community becomes both a safety net and a springboard. It steadies confidence and reminds young people that progress isn’t always linear.
The class of 2025 is entering a difficult moment, and its members deserve our empathy as well as our realism. But they also deserve our belief. The world of work is being reshaped, and they will help reshape it. When you have these five conversations, you help bring clarity, support and a little optimism. You are supporting the class of 2025 to step into long working lives not with anxiety alone, but with agency, momentum and hope.
● Lynda Gratton is professor of management practice at London Business School. Her latest book is Redesigning Work: How to Transform your Organisation and Make Hybrid Work for Everyone
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