IBM to triple entry-level hiring in US in 2026 with roles recast for AI era | Industry News
By Jo Constantz
International Business Machines Corp. announced it would triple entry-level hiring in the United States in 2026, even as artificial intelligence appears to be weighing on broader demand for early-career workers.
Although the company declined to disclose specific hiring numbers, it said the expansion would be “widespread,” affecting a wide range of departments.
“And yes, that’s all of these jobs that we’re told AI can do,” Nickle LaMoreaux, IBM’s chief human resources officer, said at a conference this week in New York.
LaMoreaux said she revised entry-level job descriptions for software developers and other roles to advocate internally for the recruiting drive.
“The entry-level jobs that you had two or three years ago, AI can do most of them,” she said at Charter’s Leading With AI Summit. “So if you want to convince your business leaders that you need to make this investment, then you need to be able to show the real value that these people can bring right now. And that needs to be done through completely different jobs.”
The result is a different mix of tasks for early-career workers at IBM. Since AI tools can handle most routine coding tasks, the company’s junior software developers now spend less time there and more time working with clients. In the HR department, entry-level employees now spend time intervening when HR chatbots don’t meet expectations, correcting results and speaking with managers as necessary, rather than answering every question themselves.
IBM’s decision comes amid growing questions about whether AI will wipe out opportunities for new graduates. Last year, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that half of entry-level office jobs could disappear by 2030. And recent advances in AI models have stoked anxiety among students worried about being laid off in an already tough job market.
Cutting back on early-career hiring may save money in the short term, but it risks creating a shortage of middle managers down the road, LaMoreaux said. This could force companies to poach talent from competitors, which tends to be more costly than promoting from within. Additionally, these recruits typically take longer to acclimate to the company’s culture and systems than those trained internally, she said.
Some executives and economists say young workers are a better investment for companies in the midst of a technological revolution.
When it comes to using AI, “it’s like they’re cycling in the Tour de France and the rest of us still have training wheels,” said Melanie Rosenwasser, chief human resources officer at file-sharing platform Dropbox Inc. “Honestly, that’s how far ahead of us they are in terms of skills.”
Dropbox is now expanding its internship programs and new graduate programs by 25% to capitalize on younger workers’ AI fluency, she said.
