Experts say AI isn’t wiping out all junior roles, but it’s forcing fresh grads to level up and prove the one thing machines still can’t replace: human judgment.
When her six-month internship in public relations abruptly ended at the halfway mark, communications graduate K Sudhiksha, 23, wasn’t entirely surprised.
Officially, she was told it was due to a company restructuring, but she suspected that it had something to do with how her job could be done by artificial intelligence (AI).
“I was spending most of my time running prompts on ChatGPT,” she told CNA TODAY, referring to the popular AI chatbot.
“We were all encouraged to do it. I could do my tasks faster, but it also made me feel creatively stunted.”
Ms Sudhiksha, who had joined the PR firm in July hoping to learn how to craft press releases and pitch news stories to the media, found that much of her work revolved around using AI tools to generate first drafts of media releases and summarise weekly news coverage for clients.
While there were warnings to carefully fact-check the output generated by ChatGPT, she said the reliance on AI made the experience feel hollow as she had hoped for a more hands-on, creative process that would let her flex her own brain muscles.
Three months into her internship, her role was made redundant, Ms Sudhiksha said.
Currently between jobs, she admitted that her experience has left her feeling pessimistic and frustrated, as she has to compete with machines: “I wish I had experienced PR before the AI era.”
For Mr Mitchell Yap, 25, a customer service specialist at a tech firm, the impact of AI on job security has also been tangible. The company recently introduced a support bot designed to handle as many customer queries as possible before transferring them to a human agent.
“As the bot improves, my team now handles only the more complex or sensitive cases, but we can’t ignore that this also means the overall workload is shrinking.”
While he is not overly anxious yet, Mr Yap admits that every new update to the bot makes him and his colleagues wonder how long their roles will stay essential.
The experiences of Ms Sudhiksha and Mr Yap reflect a growing concern among young workers and jobseekers, including those who have not even entered the job market yet: Is AI going to take away the first jobs they’ve worked so hard to qualify for?
For some, that answer is affirmative. In the legal industry, for instance, recruiters like Ms Shulin Lee, managing director of legal executive search firm Aslant Legal, have already seen how automation and AI are impacting entry-level hiring.
“In 2024, law firms prioritised mid-level to senior hires. There were almost no openings for juniors with one to two years’ experience,” she said. “It was one of the toughest years for junior hiring I’ve seen in my 15 years in recruitment.”
While AI wasn’t the only factor behind the decline – cost and competency gaps among Gen Z hires also played a role – Ms Lee recalled law firm partners telling her that AI tools can now conduct due diligence on 200 contracts in two hours, hence reducing the need for juniors.
According to data from Jobstreet by Seek, the number of entry-level postings in Singapore fell by more than 25 per cent in the first half of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024, even as total job openings rose slightly, by 4 per cent.
The data points to what Jobstreet calls a “recalibration” of the job market. Many entry-level roles are being reshaped as more companies embrace automation to handle routine tasks traditionally assigned to junior team members, said Ms Yuh Yng Chook, director of Asia sales and APAC service at Seek, which owns Jobstreet and Jobsdb.
Similarly, human resource (HR) platform Remote surveyed 250 Singapore employers in its Global Workforce Report 2025, and found that four in five had reduced the number of entry-level hires at their companies due to AI.
Eighteen per cent of Singapore firms said they had eliminated roles or reduced headcount due to AI, while another 18 per cent had hired or reassigned roles specifically to support AI-related initiatives.
Still, some experts stressed that it’s not just AI that is driving the decline in recruitment activity. Mr Lewis Garrad, partner and career practice leader for Asia at global consulting firm Mercer, said the slowdown in graduate hiring reflects both technological change and a more cautious business climate.
“AI can support and complete certain tasks, but it rarely replaces an entire job,” he said, adding that companies are automating routine parts of work while rethinking roles amid slower growth and tighter budgets.
Mr Chiew Chun Wee, regional policy and insights lead for Asia Pacific at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), agreed.
“‘AI is coming for your jobs’ makes for compelling headlines, but the reality is far more nuanced,” he said.
According to Mr Chiew, most organisations are trying out tools for limited tasks such as drafting written work, transcribing meeting minutes and supporting research – not replacing entire roles.
Adoption also varies by size and sector, as smaller firms tend to be nimbler in trying out new apps, while larger ones are developing in-house tools.
“The nuance lies in how AI reconfigures work … Automating knowledge work is actually quite hard,” Mr Chiew said.
“Processes are messy and full of judgment calls. So the future of work won’t be about replacing people. It’ll be a blend of automation, augmentation and human judgment.”
That’s also why some experts believe that companies cannot afford to stop hiring young people altogether. As Ms Lee put it: “If you stop hiring young people now, you’ll be short of mid-levels later. The pipeline will dry up.”
WHERE ENTRY-LEVEL ROLES ARE DISAPPEARING
While AI is not wiping out entry-level jobs across the board, its impact is most visible in routine roles.
JobStreet’s data shows that in Singapore, entry-level sales roles have fallen 61 per cent and entry-level customer service positions by 45 per cent, as chatbots, automated lead-generation tools and self-service systems take over tasks once handled by new hires.
Ms Gillian O’Brien, general manager of Remote Recruit at Remote, said similar declines are appearing in customer support, software development, sales development and marketing content production. Remote Recruit is a product under the Remote brand.
“These are roles where most of the tasks, such as IT ticket triaging, entry-level coding, sales lead list building and drafting blog content can be done by AI,” she added.
Globally, the pattern mirrors Singapore’s: In the United States, a 2025 study by ADP Research, the global thought leader on labour market and employee performance research and the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, shows employment among workers aged 22 to 25 in AI-exposed jobs has dropped 6 per cent between late 2022 and July 2025.
Within that, junior software developers fell 20 per cent and customer-service roles 11 per cent – the very functions most easily automated.
The ripple effects are being felt far beyond frontline roles. Across industries, companies are reorganising their operations in response to the accelerating impact of AI and automation.
At Amazon, for instance, the company announced an overall reduction of about 14,000 corporate roles in October as part of efforts to “reduce layers” and “increase ownership”.
In a note to employees, Ms Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice-president of people experience and technology, called AI “the most transformative technology since the internet”, saying it enables companies to innovate faster and must be met with leaner, more agile structures.
While she did not link the layoffs directly to AI, her comments reflect how major firms are reorganising to stay competitive in an AI-driven economy.
Source: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/today/big-read/ai-junior-entry-level-jobs-young-workers-5449836