The US job market is showing clear signs of turbulence. A recent wave of high-profile layoffs has broken the “no-hire, no-fire” stasis of early 2025, raising immediate concerns about economic stability.
At the same time, a less visible but equally significant trend is taking hold: the steady erosion of entry-level job opportunities, particularly for the youngest members of the workforce.
These two developments are not unrelated. Both are increasingly being linked to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), which is simultaneously forcing companies to make difficult financial decisions today while fundamentally reshaping the job landscape of tomorrow.
Funding the future: layoffs and the AI investment cycle
A number of major corporations, including Amazon (14,000 jobs), Microsoft (15,000 jobs), and UPS (34,000 jobs), have recently announced significant workforce reductions.
While the stated reasons vary from restructuring to cost-cutting, a primary driver is the immense capital investment required to compete in the AI arms race. This pressure to fund AI development is a key contributing factor to the current wave of job cuts across multiple sectors.
This shift in corporate priorities is also having a profound long-term effect on the hiring pipeline. According to Federal Reserve data, overall job postings have plunged by 32% since the debut of ChatGPT.
The data paints a stark picture for workers aged 22-25. The Stanford report found a 13% drop in job postings for this demographic in fields with high AI exposure since 2022.
Once-popular entry-level careers, such as software development and customer service, are now in “substantial” decline, the report warned, confirming fears that AI would decimate these roles.
Amid this bleak landscape, the report identifies a clear bright spot: home health aides. The occupation is one of the least exposed to AI and is experiencing explosive growth.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects nearly 740,000 new home health aide positions will open up over the next decade.
While the median pay is modest at around $35,000, the role offers two powerful advantages: a low barrier to entry and a level of job security that has become increasingly rare in today’s labor market.
The broader demand for healthcare
The demand for home health aides is part of a much larger trend. As the baby boomer generation retires, the need for all types of healthcare workers is set to intensify.
The BLS projects about 1.9 million healthcare job openings each year over the next decade.
And unlike home health aides, many of these roles come with significant financial rewards.
Nurse practitioners, for example, earn a median annual pay of about $130,000, and the field is projected to grow by 40%—making it the third-fastest growing occupation in the country.
Other high-paying, high-growth roles include physician assistants, nurse anesthetists, and health services managers.
Why AI is expected to leave healthcare jobs untouched, for now
The explanation for healthcare’s unique stability amid the AI-driven job disruption can be found in arguments made months ago by key industry experts, who consistently identified the human side of care as its core defense.
Back in June, Geoffrey Hinton, the “Godfather of AI”, explained on The Diary of a CEO podcast why healthcare workers are “much more elastic”.
He reasoned that society’s appetite for healthcare is nearly insatiable, meaning any AI-driven efficiencies would be absorbed by more care, not fewer jobs.
He said:
If you could make doctors five times as efficient, we could all have five times as much healthcare for the same price.
That same month, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis offered a similar perspective, arguing that the empathy required in caregiving cannot be replicated by machines.
“You wouldn’t want a robot nurse—there’s something about the human empathy aspect of that care that’s particularly humanistic,” he said in an interview.
It’s undeniable that the job market is changing. The AI boom is certainly leading to mass layoffs today and fewer ways for young people to start their careers.
But even in this evolving landscape, jobs centred on human connection, like those in healthcare, stand out as a stable way forward for many.
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