A wave of workers and recent graduates, spooked by AI's encroachment on white-collar work, are pivoting toward careers they believe machines can't easily replace — teaching, healthcare, and the skilled trades.
From November 2022 to June 2026, workers ages 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed jobs saw a 19% decline in employment compared to peers in the least-exposed roles, according to the Stanford Digital Economy Lab.
Enrollment in computer science programs is falling while health profession enrollment is rising, according to the National Student Clearinghouse; Teach for America enrollment grew 43% from 2022 to 2025, and Teachers of Tomorrow saw a 30% jump in applications in 2026 alone.
Registered apprenticeship enrollment among those 24 and younger rose 20% from 2022 to 2024, according to federal data.
Enrollment at Rosedale Technical College in Pittsburgh, which trains auto technicians, electricians, and carpenters, has grown 50% in two years, with calls from prospective students up 80%.
73% of adults under 30 now believe AI will lead to fewer jobs, up from 61% two years ago, according to a Pew Research Center survey released in August.
Read more via The Washington Post
AI is making it easier for North Korean operatives to fake their way into remote tech jobs at scale, and companies are increasingly looking to their HR and recruiting teams — not just their security departments — as the first line of defense.
A pod of 22 North Korean IT workers monitored by security firm Nisos applied for 170,000 positions over 10 months, landing 76 jobs; the broader WaterPlum operation has infected at least 30,000 devices in more than 100 countries and exfiltrated credentials from over 7,000 cryptocurrency wallets, according to a recent advisory from the US, Japan, Australia, and Germany.
AI has lowered the cost and skill required to run these schemes at scale, flooding recruiting pipelines with AI-polished resumes that describe seemingly perfect candidates for specific roles.
Common warning signs include VoIP phone numbers, newly created email addresses, VPN use for document submission, and LinkedIn profiles with years of listed experience but only months of history.
KnowBe4, which hired a North Korean operative in 2024 after four video interviews, has since automated phone-carrier checks, email lookups, LinkedIn scans, and duplicate contact detection across resumes to flag suspicious applicants early.
It creates this glut of applications at the top of the funnel that starts to muddy up the system of everyone doing that recruiting cycle."
Read more via Dark Reading
With employer expectations rising, entry-level hiring tightening, and AI disrupting career pathways faster than institutions can track, colleges and universities are overhauling how they prepare students for work — without a clear picture of what that work will look like.
Unemployment among recent college graduates sits at 5.6%, well above the national rate, as AI has created what some describe as a recession-like market for new degree-holders entering white-collar fields.
Just 20% of provosts say their institution has a coherent vision for how AI will change what and how to teach, according to Inside Higher Ed's 2026 Survey of Chief Academic Officers; 47% say preparing students for an AI-shaped workforce has become a central organizing principle for academic planning.
Scaling work-based learning is the most widely cited priority, but 69% of provosts identify staff capacity as the primary barrier — ahead of employer interest or faculty buy-in.
Miami Dade College's applied AI pathway, launched four years ago, now enrolls more than 2,000 students; the college this month launched an AI Elite Talent Hub embedding select students with employer partners on live AI projects.
Experts warn that institutions face a dual risk: underreacting and missing critical shifts, or overreacting and redesigning programs around trends that prove temporary.
If institutions underreact, they may miss important shifts in the skills and opportunities students will need to navigate an AI-enabled economy. If they overreact, they risk redesigning programs around trends that prove temporary, misunderstood or incomplete."
Read more via Inside Higher Ed
