The AI Hate is Existential

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Everybody's Business"

Episode: The AI Hate is Existential

Date: April 17, 2026
Hosts: Max Chafkin, Stacey Vanek Smith
Guests: Sarah Fryer (Bloomberg), Julia Rubin (Bloomberg Businessweek)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the mounting public backlash against AI, escalating to violence against tech leaders, and unpacks the deeper existential fears driving the skepticism. The conversation also explores how AI is affecting the job market, especially for young people entering the workforce. The hosts are joined by Sarah Fryer—longtime tech reporter—and Julia Rubin, editor on Businessweek’s special issue about entry-level work. Together, they analyze poll data, historical parallels, the AI job paradigm, and even quirky business pivots in the tech sector.

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Section 1: The AI Backlash and Existential Angst

Recent Violent Incidents Linked to AI (03:10)

• Molotov Cocktail Attack on Sam Altman:
  Max describes a recent arson attempt on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home and notes the attacker left behind a manifesto reflecting anti-AI sentiment.
• Shooting at Data Center Advocate’s Home:
  Stacey reports a local councilman in Indianapolis favorable to data center construction was shot at, with a note reading "no data centers."

“This attack, by the way, is not the only one. Last week in Indianapolis, a local councilman who had approved the construction of this big new data center...had bullets fired at his front door along with this note that read 'no data centers.'”

– Stacey Vanek Smith (03:49)

Societal Shift from Optimism to Anxiety (05:06)

• Sarah Fryer notes that as AI’s impact spreads—from jobs to the environment—public attitudes quickly changed from excitement to the fear of loss or harm.
• The tech industry itself has fueled this with apocalyptic warnings.

“It’s a big change when something goes from a cool new tool you play with, to the reason people think jobs are going away, the reason young people can’t find careers...the reason the environment is under stress.”—Sarah Fryer (05:06)

“They’ve literally been saying ‘our technology might end the world.’ It might be, [according to] Sam Altman...as bad as a nuclear weapon. And also it very likely will take everyone’s jobs.”—Max Chafkin (06:13)

• The hosts critique the industry’s bizarre PR—openly warning about catastrophic risks.

“The strangest public relations strategy of all time.”—Max Chafkin (06:32)

“Honesty. It’s never a good idea in PR.”—Stacey Vanek Smith (06:35)

AI and Human Connection Fears (11:10)

• Max shares Pew Research poll data: 50% of Americans are now more concerned than excited about AI (up from 37% in 2021), and only 10% are more excited than concerned.
• Notably, the top concern isn’t job loss, but ‘eroded human abilities and connections’ (27%).

“The top problem was not job loss. It was ‘erodes human abilities and connections.’”—Max Chafkin (10:41)

• Sarah points out an “existential” sense of loneliness as AI replaces real social interaction, especially for young people deprived of meaningful human connection.

“As a substitute for human connection, it’s gonna be a big enhancement...But there may be an erosion in our ability to learn how to compromise with others, to collaborate with others...Yeah, this is all existential.”—Sarah Fryer (12:15, 13:26)

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Section 2: The Political, Economic, and Social Impact of AI

AI’s Economic Scale vs. Everyday Impact (13:58)

• AI is driving market gains and “fueling the economy” (notably the tech "Magnificent Seven").
• Tech companies are investing $650 billion in data centers (2026), but there’s a disconnect with consumer wellbeing (grocery prices stay high, etc.).

“The top four tech companies are spending 650 billion dollars on data centers this year. That’s insane...But how much of that money is trickling down to everyday people?...There’s a disconnect right now.”—Sarah Fryer (13:58)

• The political blowback is beginning to show, anticipated to impact upcoming midterms.

Personal Security for Tech Executives (14:37)

• High-profile violence has led to dramatic security for tech leaders (e.g., Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman building bunkers, heightened private security).

“[They] have spoken of building bunkers at their properties.”–Sarah Fryer (15:11)

“Not a great public relations strategy, talking about your bunkers.”—Max Chafkin (15:42)

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Section 3: The Job Market for Young People—Crisis and Change

Struggles in the Entry-Level Job Market (17:10)

• Field reports from young jobseekers highlight the acute difficulty, especially for international applicants and those lacking connections or native English skills.
  • Connections/networking is considered more important than ever.
• Young college graduates face higher unemployment rates than the general population, breaking a long-standing trend.

“Young people being out of work is really bad for the long-term health of the economy.”—Julia Rubin (20:48)

The Broken Pipeline from College to Work (21:31)

• Underemployment crisis: There are now more college graduates than jobs that require degrees.
• The common advice to “learn to code” has backfired as fields like computer science see job opening growth far outpaced by grads.

“From 2014 to 2024, entry-level openings for [CS/engineering] grew about 6%. However, graduates...grew by 110%.”—Julia Rubin (22:14)

• AI is often blamed for eliminating entry-level work, but companies often overhired during the pandemic and are using AI as a scapegoat for layoffs.

“There’s a lot of AI washing. These companies hired too much during the pandemic, and now … they’re blaming AI for layoffs when, like, that’s not really the reason why yet.”—Julia Rubin (22:38)

AI and the Evolution of Entry-level Work (23:51)

• The definition of “AI native” is debated—most recent college grads have had AI tools throughout school.
• Companies may now value “soft skills” and even majors like English more, since AI automates technical grunt work but can’t replicate core human skills.

“If we are automating away the grunt work...then perhaps the work that is more about being a human is going to be much more important.”—Julia Rubin (26:08)

Economic and Personal Consequences for Young People (26:58)

• Unemployment for young people is now higher than for the general population, reversing historic norms:
  • Long-term harms: lower lifetime earnings, higher rates of divorce, fewer kids, worse health, higher mortality.

“Not being able to get a first job is going to impact your salary for the first ten years...higher rates of divorce...worse health outcomes, higher mortality.”—Julia Rubin (27:13)

• Growing doubts about the value of an expensive college degree, given poor job prospects and underemployment (“I have been failed”).

“I do think there is a feeling of like, I have been failed...colleges having majors and class sizes...too big…the education system is totally broken.”—Julia Rubin (28:22)

The Path Forward is Unclear (30:53)

• The future of the entry-level job market is uncertain as AI creates both anxieties and hopes for new kinds of work.
• Some suggest “AI apprenticeships” or job training programs akin to medical residencies.

“I don’t think anyone knows what is going to happen. This is often cyclical. But AI...what will the cycles really look like?”—Julia Rubin (32:16)

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Section 4: Underrated (and Weird) Business Stories

Allbirds Pivots to AI (33:17)

• Once-trendy shoe company Allbirds sells its shoe business, morphs into Newbird AI, a cloud GPU provider. The pivot is mocked for its absurdity, but the stock soars 373%.

“They were the sneakers your least cool friend was really made out of. And now instead of running with shoes, they’re running metaphorically…AI, they’re going to do GPUs or something.”—Max Chafkin (34:25, 34:29)

The "Mordor Economy" (36:09)

• New term: “Mordor economy”—named after Lord of the Rings, denotes an economy obsessed with energy production and consumption spiraling out of control, causing high prices and hardship for the poor.

“It’s an economy that’s all about energy. And energy prices get more expensive so the economy has to make more energy in order to feed the energy needs—and it becomes like a snake swallowing its own tail.”—Stacey Vanek Smith (36:25)

• The use of Lord of the Rings metaphors is debated humorously.

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Featured Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It may be of help to us for particular tasks or questions or coding projects… but the vast majority of people are not seeing yet the way that AI is enriching them. Instead, they’re seeing the way that it’s taking things away.”—Sarah Fryer (05:33)
• “The top problem was not job loss. It was erodes human abilities and connections.”—Max Chafkin (10:41)
• “You have people like Mark Zuckerberg who are offering up AI as an antidote to loneliness while our social media feeds become full of AI slop.”—Sarah Fryer (11:20)
• “If we are sort of automating away the grunt work or the sort of technical work, then perhaps like the work that is more about being a human is going to be much more important.”—Julia Rubin (26:08)
• “Not being able to get a first job is going to impact your salary for the first ten years. Also higher rates of divorce, you’re going to have fewer kids, worse health outcomes, higher mortality. It’s really bad when unemployment for young people is up above the general population.”—Julia Rubin (27:13)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• AI Attacks and Backlash Begin: [03:10–07:29]
• Existential AI Anxiety & Pew Poll Data: [09:04–12:15]
• AI as Economic Driver vs. Public Benefit: [13:28–14:37]
• Job Market for Young People – Street Interviews & Analysis: [17:10–22:14]
• Entry-Level Job Crisis, Underemployment: [22:14–26:08]
• Changing Value of College Degrees: [26:58–29:25]
• Allbirds' Absurd Pivot to AI: [33:17–35:51]
• Mordor Economy / Energy Crisis Analysis: [36:09–38:47]

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Tone, Language, & Style

Throughout, the episode balances sharp insight with humor and relatable language. The hosts and guests openly debate, poke fun at PR choices and market hysteria, and ground current economic fears in both personal anecdotes and hard data.

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Conclusion

This episode paints a picture of a society at a crossroads, anxious about AI’s impact on jobs, personal relationships, and even the safety of industry leaders. The panel underscores that while tech giants and politicians debate the future, young workers and everyday Americans are caught in the middle—struggling with the immediate effects of technological, social, and economic upheaval. The ultimate takeaway: the promise of technology is only half the story—fear, backlash, and uncertainty are now front and center in everybody’s business.

Transcript

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[Max Chafkin]

Radio news Stacy there's been so much talk here and elsewhere on Wall street, in the business press about AI. Your favorite subject. Saving the world, changing our lives, curing cancer, solving climate change, talking to whales. Talking to whales. Your favorite thing. Almost everyone agrees AI is awesome, as far as I can tell, but there is starting to be quite a lot of backlash as well, including some very upsetting incidents.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Yes, there has actually been some violence, including against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently. And you're right, it definitely seems like a lot of the excitement and optimism around AI has become at least more complicated.

[Sarah Fryer]

There may be an erosion in our ability to learn how to compromise with others, to learn how to collaborate with others, like people who actually give us push back, shape how we feel, teach us things. Yeah, this is all existential.

[Max Chafkin]

We're gonna hear about more of that from Bloomberg reporter Sarah Fryer. We're talking about what these threats and attempts at harm say about this current moment and the conversation around AI.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

And after that, Max, we are gonna talk about the job market. It is tough out there, especially for young job seekers, especially if you just graduated. And and BusinessWeek's latest issue is all about that, what it is like to be young and just starting out in your career.

[Max Chafkin]

College graduates, recent graduates, we see you. And even better, we have BusinessWeek senior editor Julia Rubin here to break it all down for us.

[Julia Rubin]

It's very interesting and this idea of, okay, if we are sort of automating away the grunt work or the sort of technical work, then perhaps like the work that is more about being a human is going to be much more important.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

This is everybody's business. From Bloomberg businessweek, I'm Stacey Vanek Smith. And I'm Max Chavkin jobs, AI. It is all happening this week and

[Sarah Fryer]

it is a lot.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

But stick around and Max, we can just all process this together.

[Max Chafkin]

This morning, dramatic new surveillance images of a man authorities say tried to kill OpenAI CEO Sam Altman by throwing, throwing a Molotov cocktail at his home. Investigators have charged 20 year old Daniel Marino gamma with attempted murder. Stacey, just a few days ago, as we're talking now, there was this attempted arson attack on the home of Sam Altman, the CEO and co founder of OpenAI. And there's a lot to say about this and about to say about the manifesto that this guy wrote, but I think it also maybe says something about the current sentiment, the broader sentiment about AI in general.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Yeah, I think so too. This attack, by the way, is not the only one. Last week in Indianapolis, a local councilman who had approved the construction of this big new data center in the area had bullets fired at his front door along with this note that read no data centers. It definitely seems like some of the kind of excitement and optimism around AI has, has turned or at least gotten a little more complicated.

[Max Chafkin]

Yeah, and we've got a great person talked about this. It is Sarah Fryer, Bloomberg managing editor, longtime reporter. She wrote a book all about Facebook and kind of the last time tech was under the microscope. It's called no Filter, the inside story of Instagram. Sarah, welcome to everybody's business.

[Sarah Fryer]

Thanks for having me.

[Max Chafkin]

All right, so Sarah, I feel like just a couple of weeks ago we were talking about how the AIs were going to be our friends and they were going to do all our work and they were going to usher in a glorious new future. Now we've got these attacks we mentioned. 2. There was actually a second attack on Sam Altman's house. And when you look at the poll numbers about this, there have been a bunch of polls and AI is pretty unpopular. And I'm wondering, what's your read on this? Did something change or are people just paying attention to something that was there the whole time?

[Sarah Fryer]

Well, I think it's a big change when something goes from a cool new tool you can play with to the reason people think jobs are going away, the reason young people can't find careers when they graduate from college or grad school, the reason the environment is under stress, energy prices are high. There are these existential things that are tied up in the progress of AI. It may be of help to us for particular tasks or questions or coding projects and what have you, but the vast majority of people are not seeing yet the way that AI is enriching them. Instead, they're seeing the way that it's taking things away, whether that's employment or resources or just the threat that it might one day take something away. And part of that, I think, is the company's own fault. The way that they have marketed this technology as like, really, this is so powerful. We need to roll this out slowly, take our time, because if we don't, the results could be disastrous.

[Max Chafkin]

They've literally been saying our technology might end the world. It might be Sam Altman, including Sam Altman might be as bad as a nuclear weapon. And also it very likely will take

[Sarah Fryer]

everyone's jobs, which is why you should buy it from us. Because at least we're saying the truth, right?

[Julia Rubin]

It is.

[Sarah Fryer]

The draining argument is that it is

[Max Chafkin]

the strangest public relations strategy of all time.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Honesty. It's never a good idea in pr.

[Sarah Fryer]

These companies that have. That have spoken about the power and danger and incredible uncontrollableness of AI may actually be stoking real fear in regular people who think they have to do something about it. And of course, no condonement of violence. But you don't have to go too far in the logic to get somebody to that place where they fear AI and think that they're doing the right thing by trying to stop it. Obviously that's the wrong way to do it, but there are people having these philosophical, even religious debates in Silicon Valley right now about what AI is bringing to change our future and how much of it we should be embracing. And then there's the other side of that, which is like, how much of that is just. Just marketing talk.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Sarah, I feel like this is such a similar thing that's happened throughout history. Like back in the 1880s, there were the Luddites and the saboteurs who threw their shoes into the machines because they saw those machines as threatening their jobs. The Luddites would go with tools and smash the big textile machines apart. Do you see this as like that, or is this different? Is this just the human reaction to an existential job threat from a new technology?

[Sarah Fryer]

I think even within the companies, there's a lot of this kind of debate and anthropic has made this part of their brand. The fact that they're thinking all the time about how do we not just enact AI progress, but do it in a way that takes into account everything that could go wrong. Because once we release it on the world, we may not be able to control it. So we have to make sure that what we release is something that is at least understood. And I think that's almost impossible because there's some level of complexity to these models where we don't exactly know how they come to the conclusions that they come to. And they're deriving their conclusions from a lot of different sources. They're building upon the human knowledge that they've ingested, and they're really only as good as how they've been trained. But I think that does get us to an uncomfortable place where on the one hand, you have people trying to do whatever they can to build as quickly as they can and take advantage of the new technology. And then you have people who are too scared to even touch it.

[Max Chafkin]

Can I bring up a few sort of data points and some polling here? I. I alluded to it at the top, but In September of 2025, Pew, the big survey people, released their latest survey about how people feel about AI. And the numbers are really stark. And I think you go back to how people felt about smartphones or cloud computing or any of these other recent technology developments. It feels different. So in 2021, 18% of people were more excited than concerned about AI, and 37% of the people were more concerned than excited. So a lot of concern about AI. Four years later, there's been a lot more AI. A lot of people have had contact with this technology, and the numbers have gotten way worse. 50% more concerned than excited, 10% more excited than concerned. A huge, huge majority. And then the by far the biggest thing in this survey is more concerned. And then the second part of this, this is showing up, of course, in. In politics, people getting upset about data centers in their backyard. Bernie Sanders saying, we need to have a pause on data centers. But the thing that really grabbed me in this sur was not the top line. But then they went and asked people, okay, what are you concerned about? Sarah, you brought up a bunch of things. You brought up the environment. You brought up job loss. There was one other. When I heard about this, I thought, okay, yeah, so people are probably worried about. It's probably economic anxiety, right? They've been hearing these stories about job loss. It's gotta be the main thing. But you look at this survey, they asked of the people who are most concerned, the top problem was not job loss. It was erodes human abilities and connections. That was 27%. Eighteen, negative impact on accuracy of information. Next one, concerns over human control of AI. And then job loss is all the way at number five. The fifth most concern, the environment, which you hear a lot about on the news is way down there. It's almost at the very bottom, like 2%. And then, then my favorite is general dislike, which is just 1%. That's the lowest one.

[Sarah Fryer]

That's you. So it's so interesting.

[Max Chafkin]

They're like spiritual concerns that people have. Right. They are worri jobless, but they're also worried about these more fundamental questions.

[Sarah Fryer]

It's crazy loneliness. And you have people like Mark Zuckerberg who are offering up AI as an antidote to loneliness while our social media feeds become full of AI slop. One thing I think that is different about this era of new tech compared to the past waves is this is not as clear a game of disrupting the giants as past eras of new tech have been. Normally when you have this big powerful new startup, they're coming in to fight the incumbent. We've just come off of a couple decades of sour feelings about big tech. These AI giants don't exist without big tech. They're collaborating, they're in deep business partnerships, deep financial partnerships. They need each other. And I think that means that a lot of the sentiment and distrust that people have about Facebook, about Google, about all these companies that they've just built up an aversion to over, over antitrust, over their personal data, over all these things over the past few years, and yet we keep using them because they're the best options we have. A lot of that is, is trickling over to the AI era and people are thinking of these companies sort of in the same boat. Think if you're like a young person today and you're being told you can't be on social media or it's dangerous to be on social media. What are you going to do with your time? You're probably going to talk to ChatGPT. I just think that as a substitute for human connection, it's gonna be a big enhancement in some ways because it's something that will always respond, will always be there. We'll always give you an answer. But there may be an erosion in our ability to learn how to compromise with others, to learn how to collaborate with others, like people who actually give us pushback, shape how we feel, teach us things. Yeah, this is all existential.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

To get a little more practical though, AI is really, it feels like in many ways kind of holding up our economy right now. Obviously the magnificent seven stocks, which are all very deeply invested, if not making AI, are really carrying the markets, which has been one of the real bright spots in the economy lately. I mean, how big a part of Our economy is AI like, even if we're worried about it. And there are all these mixed feelings that are surfacing. Do we need it?

[Sarah Fryer]

Oh, yeah. The top four tech companies are spending 650 billion doll on data centers this year. That's insane. It's insane. Not insane. If you think about what the capacity needs of AI are, it's just unprecedented. Yeah, that is fueling the economy. But how much of that money is trickling down to everyday people who are going to the grocery store and seeing prices higher than. It's just there's a disconnect right now between the spending and who is receiving the benefits of having an AI economy. And I think that's going to show up in the midterms later this year.

[Max Chafkin]

Sarah, before we let you go, I'm just curious. You're talking to us from San Francisco. Big tech is your beat. We haven't mentioned the name Luigi Mangione, but I remember when the United Health CEO was assassinated, there was a lot of in talking to sources and stuff, they were afraid and I think are still afraid. And I'm curious whether you're picking up that same level of anxiety. Like, are people aware of the potential for violence, for this kind of generalized anxiety to spill into something scary.

[Sarah Fryer]

I think that there has been a lot of thought put into executive security in the wake of the United Healthcare shooting and even before that. Mark Zuckerberg, he has millions of dollars each year spent on the security of him and his family. A lot of executives, including Sam Altman, have spoken of building bunkers at their properties, maybe even for more than.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Zuckerberg has a bunker on Kauai, I think.

[Sarah Fryer]

Yeah, plenty of them have bunkers.

[Max Chafkin]

Again, not a great public relations strategy. Talking about your bunkers.

[Sarah Fryer]

Right.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

The locals might not love that.

[Sarah Fryer]

Right. And I don't know if the bunkers are to protect from angry citizenry or to protect from the AI apocalypse. I'm not quite sure.

[Max Chafkin]

Sarah Fryer, thanks for being here.

[Sarah Fryer]

Thanks for having me.

[Max Chafkin]

Modern enterprise. That's a lot of moving parts. Comcast business helps you orchestrate it all with SD WAN working at scale to keep 150 hospital locations connected and working as one. Plus SASE and Zero Trust Security. Protecting financial data across a bank's 2000 branches. And AI powered networking that optimizes traffic across five continents. No one does business like Comcast business,

[Julia Rubin]

Max.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

We live in a world that is really good at telling us what just happened, but not always so great at explaining why it matters.

[Max Chafkin]

That's what we do every Friday on Everybody's business. Each week, Stacey, we take the biggest stories in business markets and the global economy and slow them down, adding the context you need to actually understand what's going on.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

And if you want even more of that reporting and insight, a Bloomberg subscription gives you unlimited access to the journalism behind those stories.

[Max Chafkin]

Subscribe [e-mail] podcastoffer max 1 of the

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

things I think we've talked about maybe more than almost anything else is jobs, the job market, which has been just the source of a lot of distress and a lot of worry for years now.

[Max Chafkin]

Yeah. And it's been especially bad for young job seekers for people who are sort of leaving school and trying to like find their first job or their first internship. It's tough out there.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

It is tough out there, yeah. For young job seekers. The unemployment rate I think is almost two times what it is for overall job seekers. And the situation for overall job seekers isn't great either. And we wanted to see what it feels like for people who are young and maybe just starting out in their careers or just about to enter the job market. And so we sent our producer Jasmine JT Green out onto the streets of New York to talk to some young people and ask them what their job situation is.

[Julia Rubin]

Right now, I think current job market in the US is really limited, especially to like international students like me, especially who doesn't have any like US citizenship or green card or something like that.

[Max Chafkin]

I'm a student and what I've heard is it's really difficult to get a job right now. Depends what world you're in. But I'm studying biology, hopefully to be a dentist. And for me it's been really difficult to find like internships, stuff like that. Boost my resume and eventually get a better job.

[Julia Rubin]

For me, trying to get a job in New York City, like a part time job, it's really hard. And I have been unemployed for a few months now and it's hard to get another part time job.

[Max Chafkin]

What would you say is the most difficult part? Having connections and like knowing who to reach out to to find what you want. Because I feel like cold emailing a lot of the time doesn't really work. So I feel like having connections that can really get you a job is definitely the hardest part.

[Julia Rubin]

English is my second language and kind of, I think it's really hard for me to engage like people in the community and stuff like that. I think that there's just a high demand for jobs and there aren't enough and also. Yeah, that's it.

[Max Chafkin]

High demand for Jobs and art that tells the story.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

You know what's interesting for me hearing this, I feel like, you know, at all, all the time, there are things that give you a leg up in the job market, right? If. If you're looking for a job in your native language, if you have some citizenship in the place where you're looking for a job, if you have connections, all these things that are always an advantage in the job market. I think when the job market gets tight, it becomes like really, really hard to get a job. If you don't have those things. I mean, they would always be a leg up, but all of a sudden it's like almost impossible to get a job. If you don't have like every conceivable advantage, then it becomes impossible.

[Max Chafkin]

We're talking about this, of course, because in the brand new issue of Bloomberg Business Week, we have a whole bunch of stories all about first jobs. This is an awesome collection of this combination of sort of trend stories and first person and interviews. It's all about what things look like right now for young people, what does it mean for their careers. But also for all of us. We have Julia Rubin. She is a BusinessWeek editor. Our colleague is here in the studio with us right now. Julia, welcome to everybody's business.

[Julia Rubin]

Thank you so much. I feel this is like a real, you know, longtime listener, first time caller situation.

[Max Chafkin]

So you know her from the credits.

[Julia Rubin]

That's right.

[Max Chafkin]

Julia helps us each week put together this show. And you also put together this awesome issue.

[Julia Rubin]

Thank you. Yeah, I did.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I want to start out really broadly. What does the job market look like for young people right now? What are they up against?

[Julia Rubin]

It's bad. It's not good. The unemployment numbers for young people are higher than the unemployment numbers for, for the general population. And we are in a time of overlapping crises right now. And many things feel really bad, but this in particular is not good. There are fewer entry level jobs. There are more people applying to them. Young people being out of work is really bad for the long term health of the economy.

[Max Chafkin]

And not just young people, but particularly young people with college degrees. Right. That's one of the big and strange and upsetting trends, I guess, especially if you're one of these people with a college degree, is that historically your job prospects are better if you have a college degree. And right now that is. That's not true. Right, Julia?

[Julia Rubin]

Yes and no.

[Max Chafkin]

Okay.

[Julia Rubin]

There is an underemployment crisis, which means that there are more degree havers than degree requiring jobs. That said, degree requiring jobs are still going to make you more money. It is still something that is incredibly desirable. But if you are able to get a job right now and you are young, it's very possible you're getting a job that you did not need your $200,000 education for.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

What are some examples of this? Did they talk to anybody who was underemployed in the issue? Because I feel like we see numbers for unemployed and I believe the unemployment numbers for 18 to 24 year olds is, I think it's like over 8%. It's really high. But underemployment, the data is a little harder.

[Julia Rubin]

Yeah, I think the most interesting place and the most kind of salient place to start is like engineers and computer science grads, because from 2014 to 2024, entry level openings for those kinds of roles grew about 6%. However, graduates of those fields or into those fields grew by 110%. So there is this huge mismatch between

[Max Chafkin]

what people told us to learn to code.

[Julia Rubin]

I know.

[Max Chafkin]

And they lied.

[Julia Rubin]

And you know what? I didn't learn to code. And look, we are not recent college grads, but there you go. But no, totally. And I think this is a field where AI in theory is starting to have some impact. But also there's a lot of AI washing. These companies hired too much during the pand, and now they're blaming AI for layoffs when, like, that's not really the reason why yet at least that they are slashing jobs.

[Max Chafkin]

Julia, at the beginning of this issue of about first jobs and early career workers, there's this really staggering chart that compares essentially the unemployment rate for recent college graduates, people between the ages of 22 and 27 and everybody else. And until looking at it about what, like 2020, for, for a very long time, as 14 years or so, 15 years, the recent college graduates had a much lower unemployment rate than the rest of us. And basically, if you were a recent grad, you were golden compared to the average worker. And it flipped. And, and, and that I think maybe gets to the core of a lot of the kind of anxiety you hear from young workers as well as conversations around AI. And is this a crisis and how bad is it?

[Julia Rubin]

I mean, it's totally complicated and no one knows anything yet. There are definitely people saying, okay, AI is going to wipe out the bottom rung of the ladder. And the entry level jobs, the work that entry level workers are doing, that's the easiest stuff to be automated. There are also people who are like, actually this is going to create all of these jobs. And it's actually just going to sort of change the nature of what these first jobs look like. They'll be way more valuable. And there is this class of what we're calling AI natives, though I don't really know if I totally agree with that because people who are graduating the class of 2026 have had access to these large language models their entire college careers.

[Max Chafkin]

They've been cheating on their college classes for years. They are ready to be management consultants.

[Julia Rubin]

But your children are actually the AI natives, right? Because it's like if you're like in elementary school, you are growing up with the technology in the same way that we did with the Internet and then like social, that you did that, I did that. I'm very young. I don't know if you can tell. But yeah, so it's. There is some level of AI fluency, but there's also dependency. You are also having these kind of recent grads or sometimes college students going into these internships. And they know how to use these tools way better than anyone else in the workplace does, but they know nothing about the subject matter that they are actually, you know, using the models for. There's also a lot of soft skill stuff that they may not know. They don't know how to present the slide deck that is being made for them by the AI.

[Max Chafkin]

Yeah, one of my favorite parts of this issue, there's a story about management consultants. And the funny thing is it seems like a lot of the anxiety among the people who run management consultancies is not about the entry level employees so much as the idea that AI slop might be somewhat indistinguishable from the normal output of a management consultancy. And that is manifesting in that they really want to make sure that their junior associates, whatever they're called, have soft skills that they don't just sound like they're reciting points on a PowerPoint created by a chatbot.

[Julia Rubin]

And that's why we're hearing too, it's, oh, like we really want English majors. And that's like across, across the spectrum now. Which is also like a joke because when we graduated it was like, again, gotta be an engineer, gotta be a business major, whatever. And so a lot of that I think is down to the I'm stealing

[Max Chafkin]

this, but learn to ode.

[Julia Rubin]

Learn to ode. Man, I didn't even. I wasn't even an English major. I don't know. But yeah, it's very interest. And this idea of, okay, if we are sort of automating away the grunt work or the sort of technical work, then perhaps like the work that is more about being a human is going to be much more important.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Julia A lot of times young people, especially in difficult job markets, get the

[Sarah Fryer]

short end of the stick.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

So a lot of times you will see unemployment much higher for younger people than it is for the rest of the workforce. Do you see this moment as different from previous downturns in that way? Is this moment harder on young workers than like the housing crisis and the financial crash were, or is this sort of the same?

[Julia Rubin]

Young workers are always going to be the first impacted. It's like when there is like a soft job market, like that is who is going to have the most trouble. But what's interesting is unemployment was way higher during 2008, 2009, 2010, when I graduated, but the overall unemployment was higher than for recent grads. And that is flipped now. And I think that is something that is, like, really interesting and like, really concerning because people are not able to enter the market and then they're not able to build their careers. There's also this, like, horrible research that is not being able to get a first job is going to impact your. I think it's like your salary for the first 10 years. Also higher rates of divorce, you're going to have fewer kids. There's like worse health outcomes, there's higher mortality. It's really bad when unemployment for young people is up above the general population.

[Max Chafkin]

One thing I've wondered about this conversation has made me sometimes a little bit uncomfortable because so much of it seems to be about class and about the expectation that going to college will vault you above people who don't go to college. And the fact that that is breaking down feels like a violation of some sort of social contract. In the reporting for this, for these stories. Are you picking up anything like that? Any young people being like, not only should I not have learned to code, but maybe I shouldn't have gone to college?

[Julia Rubin]

Yeah, I mean, when I think about the cost of College, I graduated 16 years ago. I think college is now twice it cost twice what it was when I was there. And I remember even like five years out, it was like 50% more like I couldn't it. How could college possibly get any more expensive? So I would say there's definitely a sense of, like, how could this possibly be worth it? That said, it doesn't change the kinds of jobs that people want that still are paying more than jobs that don't require degrees. But I do think there is a feeling of like, I have been failed. And one thing that we did find is that this is an education problem. This is like colleges having majors and class sizes for those majors that are too big. It is schools not working with each other to make sure that each class is going to have X many graduates. And across the country in this field where there's not going to be jobs, like the education system in this way is like actually totally broken. Just as like the application process for jobs is also totally broken. So there's like these two very broken systems that young people are dealing with.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

It is still true that the unemployment rate for people with a college degree is lower than people who haven't graduated from college. And even for people with a high school diploma, it's lower than people who don't have a high school diploma. Do you feel like the broken promise is more like a feeling about the future prospects or is this an underemployment thing that's maybe not being captured in those numbers?

[Julia Rubin]

You know, one thing to note too is that it is not like the jobs that these that you are taking when you are underemployed are great either. When, you know, we look at trades, I think there's been all this conversation recently about tech leaders saying we're going to need all these electricians and plumbers. But actually there's been this total plateau, I think in the last year there's been a net loss of 150,000 jobs in the trades. And Trump said tariffs are going to bring back blue collar jobs. But actually, no, it's like made manufacturing more expensive, it has made repair work more expensive. And the data just really does not support that. These data center builds for AI are going to, you know, result in sort of this boom of electricians and plumbers.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

So looking at the trends as they are now and assuming that AI does indeed become a bigger part of our economy and more jobs are displaced and things like that, like, where do you see this group of workers and would be workers heading, like, what does this look like in the next 10 years?

[Julia Rubin]

Hard question. I mean, I think people really don't know. Cause I think again there still is this open question on like AI, like is AI going to decimate the entry level, you know, job market, slash the job market, period? Is it something that is really going to augment it? You know, we've already seen like fewer computer science majors in the last year. I do think what, what kids are deciding to study is going to change, but we really, we really just kind of don't know. I think, you know, One thing Brad Stone, our editor in chief, said, it's like, you know, should there be sort of like an AI apprenticeship program?

[Max Chafkin]

Wait, what does that mean? I was wondering, is that, does that like, is that mean like you learn how to use a.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Or you like on the job training

[Max Chafkin]

or you apprentice because. Or you major, you just have to, you just can't get paid?

[Julia Rubin]

I think it's like training programs. I think it is like here is, you know, how to use this technology for, you know, X, Y, Z line of work. I mean, you know, in another example he had is, you know, we are. The U.S. subsidizes, you know, med school, right? And all around the world there are educational programs that are subsidized and also really pushed, whether they be trade programs, you know, or other ways to really kind of like boost this entry level workforce. So my very unsatisfying answer is like, I don't think anyone knows what is going to happen. This is often cyclical. But AI, if it really is this, you know, paradigm shifting thing, what will the cycles really look like?

[Max Chafkin]

Julia, you need to stick around because we're going to talk about paradigm shifts even more. Can't wait when we get to the underrated stories.

[Julia Rubin]

See you then.

[Max Chafkin]

Foreign. Hi, I'm PJ Vogt. My podcast, Search Engine, has a new two part series for you. Of all the new technologies coming out of AI, the most transformative one might be driverless cars. They're already on the road in 10American cities and they're quickly coming to more. We tell the story of how we got here. The secret team at Google that spent 15 years building what might be the safest vehicle on the road. And we cover the fights brewing in blue cities where unions and politicians are working to keep those cars off the streets. Listen to Search Engine wherever you get your podcasts. Stacy, Julia, I mentioned a paradigm shift and I've got a big one. The underrated story. Some people have probably seen this. I'm not even sure if it's underrated, but it's just so stupid that I can't not talk about it. Remember Allbirds, those dorky shoes?

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Like the hippie shoes?

[Julia Rubin]

Yeah, I bought them for my dad.

[Max Chafkin]

I was just gonna say they were the sneakers that like your least cool friend was really made out of. Recycled dad, you're a cool dad. Or like if you were like a white collar worker working in a business casual workplace. Like, it's like a sensible. It's the floor shine of sneakers. Anyway, they were really big for like a hot second. I'm trying to remember what the height of Allbirds was. I guess it was like Covid era.

[Julia Rubin]

Yeah. Or like right. Pre pandemic. It was like. Cause it was also very much like direct to consumer. Boom.

[Max Chafkin]

Direct to consumer. And then we all got cozy. And then Allbirds backed. And for a brief amount of time, it was very valuable. And then this came up. Last week. It was sold. It had been worth billions of dollars. It had been worth $4 billion. It was sold for 39 million. But what I found out today on Bloomberg.com a great website that people should check out, if they haven't, is that actually they did not sell at Alberts. They just sold the. At the shoe sale part of the business. And the other part of the business is pivoting. Can you guess what the pivot is to Julia and Stacy?

[Julia Rubin]

I can because you read. I already read the story.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

But it's crazy.

[Max Chafkin]

AI, they're going. AI, they're going to do GPUs or something. I don't think anyone involved with this really knows, but it is now called Newbird AI. They got 50 million bucks and the stock soared.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

They were always running into the future, but. But now instead of running with shoes, they're running metaphorically. Well, I think it totally fits.

[Julia Rubin]

Makes this idea, though, that you were like this part of the company, the whole part of the company was shoes. This is not.

[Sarah Fryer]

No, no.

[Max Chafkin]

It's just the name of the name.

[Julia Rubin]

So it's not like.

[Max Chafkin]

It's not even the name actually, because now it's called Newburgh.

[Julia Rubin]

They were never one of these companies that were actually a tech company. Also, wasn't their whole thing like, we're sustainable and, you know, it's not sustainable. AI.

[Max Chafkin]

I never had a pair of Auburns, but I knew many people who did. And I guess the thinking here is that brand, that really strong Allbirds brand, it could be the AI company that those Allbirds enthusiasts patronize. That's my best guess. I don't know.

[Julia Rubin]

I did learn the term. I mean, I don't even know if I can say it out loud. GPU ass like SaaS, but for GPUs.

[Max Chafkin]

GPUs as a service, GPUs as a GPUs. Who us cheap.

[Julia Rubin]

That's correct. That is correct. So, you know, and like their whole thing is going to be like hardware, which I don't know, maybe makes sense because it's like they're making a physical product, but in every other regard, it does not make any sense at all.

[Max Chafkin]

Yeah. Stocks up 373% today. That's all I know.

[Julia Rubin]

That's real.

[Max Chafkin]

That's the market is never wrong. We will follow this. I can only imagine this could really. We may have to retrack the early part of the show when we talk about AI. Just because allbirds could shake Newbird, AI could shake it up, potentially. Stacey, what's your underrated story?

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Okay, mine is it's a little bit of a conglomeration of all the news that we've been hearing. But it is this new term that I started to see this week that I found very illuminating. It is from Nate Hagens, a podcaster, and he said we are now living in the Mordor economy. Go on. Mordor, for the uninitiated, is because in Lord of the Rings it is the dystopian kingdom that tries to take over everything. But what he specifically meant and why I think this is actually really interesting, is that it's an economy that's all about energy. And energy prices get more expensive. So the economy has to make more energy in order to feed the energy needs. And it becomes like a snake swallowing its own tail. And I feel like this moment is very much the Mordor economy. Between electricity prices going nuts because of data centers and also because Canada cut us off, oil prices going nuts, natural gas prices going nuts. Fertilizer is made of a lot of natural gas. So that means food prices are going to go up. And our whole economy is becoming about making energy that is then consumed and becomes more expensive. The mortar economy, I mean, it just

[Julia Rubin]

feels like something that didn't have to happen. That's my take.

[Max Chafkin]

Okay. My critique here is more with the term is that the only thing going on with Mordor that they're using energy. I feel like this is like a fundamentally confusing analogy.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

What do you think was going on with Mordor?

[Max Chafkin]

It's like a totalitarian stake. They're trying to take over the world and get the one ring of power. I don't know. I'm not a Lord of the Rings

[Julia Rubin]

guy, so maybe a better analogy than you even.

[Max Chafkin]

Who's Sauron and who are the trees and like, where are the hobbits? I just, I'm having written a lot about guys who are really into Lord of the Rings. I'm afraid I may have, like, you

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

may be very sensitive to this metaphor. Doesn't line up at all. That is possibly true. But I do think there is something really interesting about an economy where energy starts to get so expensive. There. There's some really chilling statistics, including that for low income people they're now spending about 20% of their income on energy. That's gas and electricity and everything. 20% of their income. And I agree with you, Max, that maybe the finer points of Mordor are lost. And that's difficult. The Eye of Sauron is with you too. The Eye of Sauron's Our economy was about so much more than energy.

[Max Chafkin]

Listeners, if you have a Lord of the Rings related take, yes.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Oh my God.

[Max Chafkin]

Email us all the Everybody's at everybody'[e-mail] that's everybody's with an S. Is it the Mordor economy? And if so, who are the orcs? Let us know. This show is Produced by Jasmine J.T. green and Stacy Wong. Magnus Henriksen is our supervising producer. Sam Rogich handles engineering and Dave Perspective sell fact checks. Special thanks to Jeff Muskus, Julia Rubin, Maria Ling, Rachel Lewis Christie and Angel Recchio. If you have a minute, please rate and review the show. It means a lot to us. And if you have a story that should be our business, send us an email@everybody's bloomberg.net that's everybody with an S at the [e-mail] thank you for listening and we will see you next week. Are you feeling a touch loss right now? Like politicians aren't collaborating to solve the world's most pressing issues? Then the Disorder podcast is the right place for you. My name is Jason Pack. I worked in D.C. during the first Trump administration, been kidnapped twice in Syria. I've lived through disorder. I want to work on understanding how do we restore a semblance of order to our mad, mad world. Search Disorder in your podcast app to listen right now.