With some of the tasks traditionally assigned to junior employees disappearing amid increased use of artificial intelligence, employers may need to rethink how they develop their future leaders, according to Stacey Hummel, executive consultant for human resources at ADP Canada.

Workers aged 22 to 25 continued to see negative employment growth in 2026, with employment falling 3.1 per cent year over year, according to research from ADP. For this age group, employment in jobs with high exposure to AI dropped 4.4 per cent, marking 35 straight months of year-over-year declines.

Read: AI threatening to push young workers out of entry-level jobs

According to Hummel, that trend began in October 2023, about a year after the initial public release of ChatGPT. “We’re seeing the biggest shift at the entry level,” she says, noting employers are putting less emphasis on routine, task-based work and more emphasis on critical thinking, communication, judgment and problem-solving.

But that could also pose a potential problem — if AI is doing some of the repetitive work that traditionally........

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