Entry-Level Postings Are Down 35%: How to Actually Get Hired in 2026

If you are applying for junior roles and getting nothing back, the problem is probably not your resume. Entry-level job postings in the US are down roughly 35% since early 2023. Unemployment among recent graduates aged 22 to 27 reached 5.7% in late 2025, well above the 4.2% rate for all workers. Around 43% of new graduates are underemployed, the highest rate since the pandemic.

Meanwhile 89% of graduates now say they worry AI could replace entry-level jobs, up from 64% a year earlier, and more than half of employers say they have discussed moving early-career tasks to AI.

That is the honest backdrop. This guide is about what actually still works inside it, because plenty of people are still getting hired, and the ones who do are not applying harder. They are applying differently.

What actually changed

For twenty years the entry-level job was an apprenticeship disguised as a job. You were hired to do the routine work, the first-pass research, the initial draft, the ticket triage, the data cleanup. You were slow and expensive at it, and the organization accepted that because in eighteen months you would be useful.

AI did that work first, and it did it instantly and cheaply. So the economic case for hiring someone to learn on the job weakened at exactly the moment the tools got good.

This is why the advice that worked in 2019 does not work now. "Apply to lots of things, be enthusiastic, be willing to learn" was good advice when employers were buying potential. A large number of them have stopped buying potential and started buying evidence.

The uncomfortable implication is that the gap you have to close before your first job is bigger than it used to be. The useful implication is that the gap is closeable, and mostly by demonstrating things rather than claiming them.

What still works

Stop optimising the application, start reducing the pile

The mathematics of a public junior posting are brutal and no amount of resume polish fixes them. If 400 people apply, the resume screen exists to remove 390, and it removes on crude signals.

The moves that actually change the odds all involve not being in that pile:

• Roles posted somewhere other than the big boards. Company career pages, sector-specific boards, university-only postings, local employers with no recruiting function.
• A named human. A referral, a warm introduction, a conversation at an event, a former colleague, a tutor. This is the single largest lever and it always has been.
• Applying in the first 48 hours. Many junior postings are effectively closed after the first hundred applications, regardless of what the deadline says.
• Smaller employers. They hire less formally, screen less mechanically, and often have no ATS between you and a human at all.

If your entire search consists of applying to LinkedIn postings, you are competing in the single most saturated channel available. Our guide on applying to more jobs faster helps with throughput, but throughput into a saturated channel has sharply diminishing returns. Use the time saved for the channels above.

Show the work rather than describing it

Employers report weighing a portfolio of applied work highly, and for junior candidates it does more than a degree line does, because it is the only thing that resolves the question the whole screen is asking: can this person actually do anything yet.

This does not require a huge project. It requires one thing that is finished, public, and yours, with a written explanation of the decisions in it. A finished small thing beats an ambitious unfinished thing every time, because the signal being read is completion, not scope. We have a full guide on building a portfolio to get a job.

Aim at what is left, not what was removed

The routine parts of junior roles are the parts that went. What remains is checking, coordinating, and deciding. So the things worth demonstrating have shifted:

• Verification. Can you tell when something plausible is wrong? This is now a genuine entry-level skill because so much output arrives plausible.
• Communication. Explaining a decision clearly to someone who was not there. Consistently in the top three skills employers name.
• Ownership of something end to end, however small. Evidence that you can finish rather than just contribute.

Choose sector deliberately

Healthcare, cybersecurity and skilled trades are still actively hiring new graduates. That does not mean abandon your field. It does mean that if you are open across two or three sectors, weighting your effort toward the ones that are hiring is worth more than any resume improvement you could make.

What to do differently this month

A concrete reallocation, assuming you currently spend most of your search time applying.

Cut applications to the best ten roles a week, not fifty. Tailored, sent early, at employers you can name a reason for wanting.

Spend the reclaimed hours on two things: finishing one portfolio piece, and having three conversations with humans who work where you want to work. Not asking for a job. Asking what the work is actually like.

Prepare properly for the interviews you do get. This is the part people under-invest in, and it is where the leverage is now. When postings are down 35%, each interview you get is worth several times what it was worth three years ago, and treating it casually is expensive.

Fix the "no experience" answer specifically. It is the question that decides junior interviews and most people answer it apologetically. Our guide on what to say when you have no experience covers the reframe, which is to talk about transferable judgment rather than to apologize for the gap.

On the AI anxiety

89% of graduates worrying that AI will replace entry-level jobs is a high enough number that it is worth addressing directly, because the fear itself is now affecting how people interview.

The honest position: some entry-level tasks are gone and are not coming back. The entry-level job is not gone, but it has changed shape, and it now starts at a higher bar than it did.

The pragmatic position: being visibly capable with these tools is currently a hiring advantage rather than a threat, because employers want people who can direct and check them. Job postings requiring AI skills grew 144% year over year as of April 2026. The people struggling most are not those competing with AI, they are those who have neither the pre-AI experience nor the post-AI fluency.

That is a solvable position to be in, and it is solvable faster than most other career gaps.

FAQ

Are entry-level jobs actually disappearing?

Postings are down substantially, roughly 35% since early 2023, and AI has absorbed a lot of routine early-career work. But hiring projections for the class of 2026 were up 5.6% in NACE's spring update, so the picture is a thin and competitive market rather than a closed one.

How many applications should I be sending?

Fewer than you probably are, if applications are most of your search. Ten well-targeted applications a week plus real portfolio work and real conversations outperforms fifty rapid ones. The exception is if you have a genuine channel advantage, such as a referral network, in which case volume through that channel is fine.

Which sectors are still hiring new graduates?

Healthcare, cybersecurity and skilled trades are consistently named as actively hiring. Tech is still hiring but has become far more competitive at the junior end specifically.

Is it worth doing an internship or a second internship?

Applied experience is one of the strongest differentiators for candidates landing roles in this market, and internships remain the most reliable way to get it. If the choice is between an unpaid internship and paid unrelated work, weigh it carefully, but experience is doing more work in screens now than it used to.

Should I be worried that AI will take the job I do get?

The tasks most exposed are routine and repetitive ones. The most useful hedge is becoming the person who directs and checks the tools rather than the person doing the work the tools now do, and that is a shift you can make from inside almost any junior role.

Make each interview count more

When postings are down and applications are up, the ratio that matters flips. You get fewer interviews, so each one carries far more weight, and going in unrehearsed is a much more expensive mistake than it was three years ago.

Round Zero runs a live mock interview against the actual job description, asks follow-up questions when an answer is thin, and scores the transcript with your own words quoted as evidence. The free tier includes one full scored session, no card. If you are getting interviews and not offers, that gap is the one to close first.