Entry-Level Tech Job Postings in NYC Have Fallen 49%

Entry-level tech job postings in New York City have dropped 49% since 2022—the steepest decline of any sector in the city, according to a new report from the Center for an Urban Future (CUF), a New York-based think tank. The contraction coincides with the AI boom that followed ChatGPT's public release.

The numbers land at an awkward moment for the city's tech narrative. OpenAI and Anthropic have been putting down roots in New York, and Google now employs more than 14,000 people there. Tech employment in the city grew 160% between 2008 and 2023, a growth rate surpassed only by San Francisco.

But overall job growth in the city's tech industry has stagnated in recent years. And college graduates with computer science degrees keep arriving in steady numbers, while the entry-level positions that once absorbed them keep disappearing.

A hiring trap

Eli Dvorkin, editorial and policy director at CUF and one of the report's authors, traced the problem to a structural incentive mismatch among employers.

"The core issue is that employers face an individual incentive to hire workers who already have two or three years of experience," Dvorkin said in a recent interview with Searchlight. "But if every employer acts that way, the broader entry-level ecosystem collapses, which ultimately harms employers as well."

The CUF analysis found that the roles suffering the sharpest hiring declines are precisely those most exposed to generative AI. Since 2022, entry-level job postings in high-AI-exposure roles have fallen 29% across New York City.

The picture is not uniformly bleak. Entry-level hiring in jobs with low AI exposure has grown 21% over the same period, per the CUF report. Even within tech, employers have kept hiring for roles requiring security and data analysis expertise. Entry-level workers with strong AI skills are in particular high demand: job postings for those roles have climbed 20% in the last four years.

Still, the tech-specific decline mirrors a broader shift in the city. Since 2022, most industries in New York have seen a steady drop in entry-level postings.

The national picture

The hiring slump reflects a phenomenon playing out across the country, especially in tech and finance. Some economists have been wary of overstating generative AI's impact on the labor force, and even high-profile AI leaders have walked back bold claims about AI-driven mass job losses.

The evidence on young workers is harder to dismiss. Stanford University's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence recently found that the employment gap for workers ages 22 to 25 widened over the past year to 19%, measured against similarly situated workers in roles less exposed to AI.

Attitudes are shifting in tandem. In a recent Pew Research Center survey, nearly three-quarters of adults under 30 said they believe AI will reduce the number of jobs within the next two decades—a marker of rising skepticism among young workers about how the technology might upend the labor market.

The disruption is not confined to degree-holders. Research from the Brookings Institution earlier this year indicates that AI adoption is also disrupting pathways for workers without college degrees who have traditionally moved into white-collar work.

The stakes for New York

The city has a specific economic interest in the answer. Growth in tech employment has historically helped workers from low-income backgrounds move into more lucrative jobs, and the CUF report warns that those pathways could disappear altogether if the city does not reinvest in its tech workforce and help New Yorkers gain the experience needed to land the entry-level jobs that remain in demand.

Dvorkin argues the sector itself is not the problem. "If anything, our tech sector has proven remarkably resilient given all these macroeconomic changes and technology shifts, and it remains well-positioned for future growth," he said. "However, the real challenge is who gets the opportunity to enter that sector in the first place."