Short-term productivity wins mask a long-term crisis: the disappearance of entry-level roles that once served as the foundation of leadership development, culture, and continuity. ‍

‍The hidden leadership deficit

AI is reshaping work at record speed. What began as a way to automate routine tasks has evolved into a race to reimagine entire functions, from customer service to market intelligence. The gains are visible: higher productivity, lower costs, faster execution.

But what’s invisible may matter more. As companies replace entry-level roles with AI, they’re erasing the very foundation that grows leaders. The next generation of executives—the analysts, coordinators, and associates who once learned by doing—are disappearing before they can begin.

The prevailing wisdom says automation fuels efficiency. ZRG’s point of view: efficiency without apprenticeship erodes capability. The true competitive edge isn’t how fast you deploy AI; it’s how intelligently you design human development around it.

AI is not replacing people. It’s replacing progression. The leaders who win will be those who rebuild the ladder while they climb.

AI’s short-term win, long-term risk

Across industries, AI agents are taking on tasks once assigned to junior employees. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 estimates up to a third of entry-level roles could vanish. For HR and talent leaders, this feels like innovation in action.

But beneath the productivity dividend lies a structural risk: a broken bridge between entry-level learning and executive readiness.  

Without early-career experience, the leadership pipeline collapses. “We’ve seen this movie before. Companies chase efficiency and wake up with a capability crisis. AI should shorten the distance to insight, not the distance between people and purpose,” says Deepali Vyas, Managing Director and Sector Head, AI & Data, ZRG. Judgment, resilience, and contextual thinking—the muscles built through repetition and mentorship—atrophy.

“When I see companies cutting tens of thousands of entry-level jobs for automation, it’s a grave concern for future talent,” continues Vyas. “If AI cannibalizes the bottom of the pyramid, there will be no executives for tomorrow.”

Automation isn’t just changing work; it’s dismantling the apprenticeship economy that teaches how work gets done.

The vanishing apprenticeship

Entry-level roles have always been the silent classroom for leadership. They’re where professionals absorb what can’t be taught in theory: how to navigate complexity, read a room, manage failure, and make decisions with incomplete information.

When AI takes over foundational work, it doesn’t just replace output. It replaces opportunity.  

“Human apprenticeship is where intuition is born. You can’t algorithm your way to emotional intelligence—it’s practiced, not programmed,” states Lisa Hooker, Managing Partner, Global Technology Practice Leader, ZRG. Junior professionals lose the muscle memory of leadership—how crises unfold, how trade-offs are made, how trust is earned.

“Innovation starts with people who ask why,” says Hooker. “AI should amplify human capability, not eliminate it. The smartest companies are hiring for AI fluency, not cutting for it.” Without these formative experiences, organizations risk creating a generation of managers fluent in data, but illiterate in judgment.

The demographic collision

The timing couldn’t be worse. As Baby Boomers retire worldwide, companies face an unprecedented knowledge drain. Traditionally, younger professionals step up. But when the early-career pipeline is hollowed out, there’s no one in line.

The result is a widening “leadership lag”: a structural gap between senior expertise and emerging capability. Global data shows entry-level hiring in technology fell by more than 70% from 2024 to 2025. The downstream impact? A missing middle of mid-career managers just as organizations need them most.

And it’s not just quantity; it’s diversity. Early-career roles are the on-ramp for underrepresented talent. When those disappear, leadership becomes more homogenous, less innovative, and more vulnerable to disruption. Diversity of perspective—the oxygen of modern leadership—starts at the bottom of the pyramid.

Innovation’s quiet casualty

AI may be fast, but it is not curious. Entry-level professionals bring the fresh thinking and creative friction that keeps organizations adaptive. Remove them, and stagnation sets in.

Cultures grow cautious. Teams stop challenging assumptions. The very human curiosity that fuels innovation gets automated out of existence.

AI should expand imagination, not narrow it. The future belongs to firms that use AI to multiply human potential, not replace it.

What smart leaders are doing differently

Forward-thinking companies aren’t retreating from automation, they’re redesigning around it.

They’re creating hybrid human-AI apprenticeships that keep learning in the workflow. Instead of erasing entry-level roles, they’re reimagining them: pairing junior talent with AI copilots that accelerate learning instead of replacing it.

These hybrid models build capability faster. AI becomes a coach—helping new hires identify patterns, interpret data, and practice decision-making—while humans bring the nuance of context and judgment.

AI should accelerate human growth, not replace it. A model that preserves what matters most: the development of future leaders who are both tech-fluent and human-savvy.

The efficiency myth, and its limits

Automation’s appeal is obvious: no benefits, no burnout, no onboarding. But efficiency isn’t effectiveness.

AI can generate answers; it cannot generate leaders. It can process feedback; it cannot mentor. The leadership instinct—how to inspire, adapt, and decide—is learned through proximity and practice, not prompts and pattern recognition.

As ZRG’s research in leadership advisory shows, companies that over-index on technology often pay later through costly external hires and cultural instability. The homegrown pipeline, once lost, is expensive to rebuild.

Efficiency may reduce expenses today, but it inflates leadership costs tomorrow.

Rebuilding the ladder, differently

This is not a call to slow down. It’s a call to redesign how progress happens.

Companies can use this disruption to rebuild early-career pathways intentionally, turning entry-level roles into leadership apprenticeships powered by AI-enabled productivity.

That means reframing “junior” work as a strategic investment, not a cost center. It means embedding talent leaders, not just technologists, in AI design. And it means holding one shared goal: keeping humans in the pipeline while AI scales the work.

Because AI is not the enemy of human talent, it’s the amplifier. But when organizations automate without redesigning how people grow, they trade future leadership for present convenience.

Keep AI in the workflow. Keep humans in the pipeline.

The missing rung on the talent ladder may not be visible yet, but its absence will define the next decade of leadership.

The firms that thrive won’t be those that automate fastest, but those that integrate most intelligently.

The future of leadership will not be built by machines alone. It will be built by organizations that treat AI as a partner in developing people, not a replacement for them.

In the new talent economy, confidence doesn’t come from efficiency, it comes from intentional design.