California lawmakers, whose state is home to the most advanced artificial intelligence developers, are concerned that Congress is not prepared to respond to a job market where AI takes over entry-level jobs in the technology sector.
It’s not clear yet how often AI is replacing — or will replace — entry-level jobs, but there are early indicators, including one Oxford Economic analysis, that suggest a decline in entry-level tech roles. Now, the lawmakers who are watching this play out in their backyards are warning that AI is set to replace many of the roles graduates trained for.
“We’re deeply unprepared to respond to this issue,” Rep. Sam Liccardo, a Bay Area Democrat, told NOTUS. “Outside of a dozen of us, I don’t think there’s any significant focus from Congress on this existential challenge for our society.”
Liccardo said that one of his top concerns is the “displacement of highly skilled workers.”
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There’s plenty of interest in artificial intelligence from the federal government. Congressional Republicans recently passed funding in their reconciliation package to help adopt AI technology in the border security, energy and defense sectors. The Trump administration has also worked to integrate AI in the executive branch. But Congress has struggled to regulate emerging technologies, including AI.
“The jobs that are getting crushed by AI the fastest are often the ones that we’re pushing students towards. There’s this complete mismatch between what the job market needs and what people are actually learning. And that’s getting exacerbated by how fast AI is moving,” Rep. Josh Harder, another California Democrat, told NOTUS.
“We’ve had a couple of hearings, but ultimately, Congress moves way too slow and oftentimes that’s OK on some problems, but AI is moving so fast that if we’re too slow on this, we’re going to be left holding an empty bag,” Harder continued.
In the last decade, the number of computer science graduates has nearly doubled from over 64,000 in 2015 to over 120,000 graduates in 2024, one of the fastest growing fields of graduates entering the job market.
Mark Muro, senior fellow at Brookings Metro, said that while factors like President Donald Trump’s tariffs might be contributing to the decline in entry-level jobs in the tech sector, there is reason to believe that AI is shifting the landscape as people enter the tech sector.
“In tech, especially, hiring for entry-level programming roles has stagnated,” Muro said in a text. “The slowdown in the last year coincides with the arrival of generative AI tools and executives saying they are leaning into AI.”
It’s not hard to find examples of executives making comments about or actively incorporating AI into their workforce. And some of these companies have said they will attempt to reduce their workforce by automating tasks with AI.
“We’ll gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle,” Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn wrote in an email earlier this year, The Verge reported.
Major Trumpworld figures also actively talk about how AI could replace a significant chunk of white-collar and entry-level positions.
”I don’t think anyone is taking into consideration how administrative, managerial and tech jobs for people under 30 — entry-level jobs that are so important in your 20s — are going to be eviscerated,” Steve Bannon, a right-wing commentator and Trump adviser, told Axios earlier this year.
But even the lawmakers who are immediately concerned about this job market shift say that they still need a much better understanding of how AI will change the job market in the tech sector.
“First, we need to understand if we’re going to get a decreasing workforce [due to AI] or if we’re going to get the same number of workers that are doing different jobs. That, I don’t know the answer to,” Rep. Ami Bera of California told NOTUS.
“The real risk is that AI will do a lot of the coding,” Bera told NOTUS. “We’ve got a generation right now who’s been motivated to learn how to code, so I do think there’s a legitimate argument that AI could displace a lot of that workforce.”
Lawmakers who are thinking about how to respond to this challenge say that the first step Congress should take is to invest in training programs that would help workers adapt to new roles in the workforce.
Other ideas some lawmakers mentioned in conversations with NOTUS included public-private partnerships to help educational institutions quickly adapt to the needs of a changing job market and pointing more workers in the direction of manufacturing electronics.
“In the 80s, many manufacturing jobs were automated or sent abroad. AI might do the same things for the white-collar jobs of the present,” California Rep. George Whitesides, former chief of staff to NASA and CEO of Virgin Galactic, told NOTUS.
“We need to make sure that we are building a future where people can have hope about their economic situation,” Whitesides said.
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This NOTUS story was produced in partnership with San José Spotlight and with NewsWell, home of Times of San Diego, Santa Barbara News-Press and Stocktonia.
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