AI and Junior Tech Hiring: Why Cutting Your Pipeline Could Cost You Later

What is happening to junior tech jobs

Young people are finding it hard to get a first job. The latest ONS figures put unemployment among 16 to 24-year-olds not in full-time education at 14.1% for May to July 2026, around 469,000 people. Graduate and entry-level roles have been hit particularly hard, and AI is often given as one of the reasons.

Employers' own views are more mixed than the headlines suggest. In the Institute of Student Employers' 2026 survey, 87% of graduate employers expected AI to reshape entry-level roles, but 40% did not expect to replace any of them with AI and only 18% expected to replace more than one in ten. The CIPD's autumn 2025 Labour Market Outlook found that 17% of employers expected AI to reduce their headcount within a year, and most of those thought junior, clerical and administrative roles were most at risk.

At the same time, demand for experienced tech staff has held up. IT had one of the strongest net employment balances of any sector in the CIPD's spring 2026 survey, at +20.

Why cutting junior hiring is a false economy

It is easy to see the appeal. If an AI coding assistant can write boilerplate, generate tests and summarise logs, why pay a graduate to learn how? The problem is that the routine work was never really the point. Junior roles are how you build the mid-level and senior people you will need later.

• A graduate you hire this year can be a capable mid-level engineer in three or four years, already trained in your systems and your way of working.
• If many employers stop hiring juniors at the same time, there will be fewer mid-level candidates in a few years, and salaries will rise to match.
• AI output still needs checking. Someone has to review generated code, test it and understand why it fails, and people learn those skills by doing the work.
• Teams with no juniors tend to push routine work onto senior staff, who are the most expensive people to spend on it.

In our experience, candidates with three to five years of solid experience are already among the hardest to find. That gap is unlikely to close if fewer people start tech careers now.

What junior tech roles look like now

The ISE found that employers increasingly value critical thinking, AI literacy, communication and adaptability, while routine admin, basic data and writing tasks matter less. In tech teams, that usually means juniors spend less time writing code from scratch and more time:

• reviewing and testing code, including code produced by AI tools
• working out why something has failed and explaining it clearly
• checking data quality and the assumptions behind a report or model
• turning a vague request from the business into a clear piece of work

Those are good foundations for a tech career. The job is changing rather than disappearing, and it is worth describing it honestly in your adverts.

How to hire juniors well in 2026

AI has also made junior hiring harder to get right. In the same ISE survey, two-thirds of employers believed graduates were using AI to misrepresent their skills during recruitment, up from about half the year before. A polished CV and a perfect take-home test prove less than they used to.

• Assess how candidates think. A short live exercise, or asking them to talk through something they have built, tells you more than a take-home task.
• Ask candidates to explain code, not just write it. Can they spot what is wrong with a snippet and say why?
• Be clear about AI. Tell candidates which tools they can use in the process and in the job, and look for people who use them well rather than people who avoid them.
• Look beyond degrees. Apprentices, bootcamp graduates, career changers and self-taught candidates with real projects can all make strong juniors.
• Plan the support before you hire: a named mentor, a structured first three months and regular feedback. Juniors without support are the ones who leave.

From January 2027, unfair dismissal protection starts after six months' service, so a structured probation matters more too. Our article on the Employment Rights Act changes covers what to put in place.

If you are starting out in tech

The market for first roles is tough, but it is not closed. Employers want to see how you work, not just a list of what you know. Build something real, be ready to explain your decisions, and learn to use AI tools well rather than rely on them. Our guide to building a career in technology and our article on breaking into tech from a working-class background have practical routes in.

How we can help

We recruit technology professionals at every level. If you are thinking about adding junior roles, we can help you work out what the role should look like, where to find candidates and how to assess them fairly. Send us the role and we will tell you what the market looks like.

Sources: ONS labour market statistics, September 2026; Institute of Student Employers, Student Development Survey 2026; CIPD Labour Market Outlook, autumn 2025 and spring 2026.