AMID speculation that AI will eliminate entry-level jobs, young professionals are anxious about launching their careers. The World Economic Forum’s Youth Pulse 2026 survey found that two-thirds of youth respondents globally fear that AI will reduce the number of entry-level roles available over the next three years.
This inflection point demands honesty from Philippine business leaders: Yes, AI is eliminating some traditional entry-level tasks. Yes, the path into professional work is changing. But as with previous technological revolutions, such as the dawn of the internet, the advent of AI does not have to mean fewer opportunities if companies commit to creating new roles that pair human judgment with AI capabilities.
The government’s Labor Force Survey data show that youth employment (ages 15 to 24) rose to 88.3 percent in late 2025, indicating that fresh graduates and early-career entrants are increasingly being absorbed into entry-level roles as the Philippine economy strengthens.
Aligned with this, research indicates that a majority of executives globally (58 percent) plan to expand entry-level hiring, but for fundamentally different roles. By 2030, the World Economic Forum’s “Four Futures of Jobs in the New Economy” report projects that more than 40 percent of all worker skills will have changed, exceeding prior forecasts. The jobs being created still require core skills — communication and critical thinking — alongside new ones, such as AI fluency, or the ability to collaborate effectively with AI to drive business impact.
The era of agentic AI — AI that can act autonomously on behalf of workers — is accelerating this shift. Over the next several years, every company in every industry will become an agentic enterprise: an organization that pairs human expertise with AI-powered agents to operate at new levels of capacity and precision. It will not simply be about automating existing processes; rather, it will involve creating entirely new capabilities and ways of working.
The most profound impact of agentic AI is not the replacement of human jobs, but the freeing of people from routine work and the augmentation of human productivity, creativity and purpose. By handling many tasks that used to define entry-level work — data entry, routine coding, scheduling and first-draft content creation — humans can focus on what machines still cannot do well: asking the right questions, making ethical decisions and determining what matters.
Mastering AI partnership
AI fluency is not about understanding algorithms. It is about mastering collaboration that transforms how work gets done, progressing from using AI as a basic tool for simple tasks, to handing off entire workflows, to engaging it as a thinking partner that challenges assumptions, and ultimately to using it as a catalyst that reveals strategic opportunities not previously considered.
Consider what this looks like. An early-career sales professional preparing for customer meetings used to spend hours researching industries and competitive landscapes. Now those tasks take minutes. AI surfaces relevant insights on command, transforming preparation from time-intensive research into a focused strategic exercise. The Salesforce State of Sales report found that top-performing sellers — or those who substantially increased year-over-year revenue — are 1.7 times more likely to use prospecting AI agents for outreach than underperformers who merely maintained or decreased year-over-year revenue.
When AI handles execution, junior employees can engage in strategic thinking from day one. New hires still need to learn their industry and function, but the rite of passage is shifting. Success now centers on impact and contribution, not on proving oneself through months of routine tasks.
New competitive advantage
Most Philippine organizations are still hiring for yesterday’s workforce, seeking people who can execute tasks efficiently. In a world where AI executes tasks almost instantly, judgment separates high performers from the rest.
The emerging skill set centers on evaluation and direction: assessing AI-generated customer emails for tone and brand alignment, identifying gaps in AI-generated financial models, and asking follow-up questions to unlock new strategic directions. These are not technical skills; they are human skills elevated by AI collaboration.
House Bill 57, which proposes the “National Artificial Intelligence Code of the Philippines,” promotes a human-in-the-loop model that pairs AI efficiency with uniquely Filipino strengths, such as empathy and complex problem-solving. It creates a timely opportunity for local businesses to redesign roles and upskill entry-level workers, ensuring AI amplifies human judgment.
In practice, this means redefining what value looks like in an AI-enabled workplace. The most valuable employees will not necessarily be those who code fastest or process data quickest. They will be those who can direct AI, evaluate its output critically and know when to override it.
What leaders must do now
For Philippine business leaders, this transformation requires more than adaptation. It demands accountability.
Companies must build AI fluency programs that measure engagement, activation and expertise, not just technical certifications. They must actively redesign entry-level roles to emphasize judgment and orchestration over task completion. They must create clear pathways from education into these new roles, rather than leaving young professionals to navigate the shift on their own.
Most importantly, companies must commit to creating these new positions, not just talking about them. The current job market challenges for graduates are real. Business leaders have a responsibility to ensure this transformation creates opportunity, not just efficiency.
Companies that invest in developing these new career pathways will not only gain competitive advantages but also help address a generation-defining challenge.
Human capabilities waiting to be unlocked
AI is fundamentally transforming entry-level work. But organizations that invest in people throughout this transition — actively creating new roles, building clear pathways and developing AI fluency from day one — can build stronger workforces for this new era.
The entry-level job of the future is not about knowing the most. It is about thinking the best. It is about being the person who asks, “Should we?” not just “Can we?”
The professionals who master this partnership, and who develop judgment and empathy alongside technical fluency, will define the next era of work — if business leaders create the opportunities for them to do so.
Abraham Cuevas is the country general manager at Salesforce Philippines, a global cloud computing and enterprise software company best known for its customer relationship management (CRM) platform.
