The Vanishing On-Ramp: Gen Z in the Workplace and the Future of Entry-Level Roles

What happens when the on-ramp ends before it begins?

Editor’s Note: This post is the first in a three-part series exploring Gen Z in the workplace. In Part 2, we’ll examine why Gen Z’s skills and instincts make them strategic assets in today’s AI-driven organizations. Part 3 will look at the values they bring to the workplace and why those values are critical cultural infrastructure for the future.

For decades, entry-level roles served as a ladder: modest in responsibility but rich in opportunity. Young workers, including Millennials and now Gen Z in the workplace, stepped into those roles. They learned the ropes, built relationships, and climbed the organizational ladder.

Today, something fundamental is changing. The rungs at the bottom are eroding. Meanwhile, the top is tightening. The result? A workforce squeezed from both ends, leaving many Gen Z workers searching for rungs that no longer exist.

Entry-Level Work Becomes AI Work: The New Reality of Gen Z in the Workplace

A quiet but profound shift is underway: AI and automation are absorbing the tasks once reserved for early-career employees. Drafting basic reports, data entry, initial research, and even first drafts of creative content are increasingly handled by AI tools and workflow automation.

Where interns and junior associates once learned by doing, organizations now often bypass that layer altogether. They allocate work to AI or hire mid-career individuals who can “hit the ground running.” This restructuring narrows opportunities for skill-building at the entry level, reshaping how the next generation accesses work.

🟢 Older Workers Staying Longer: How the Top Tightens

At the same moment that entry roles are thinning, the upper and middle layers of organizations are tightening. Older employees are staying longer or returning after “retirement,” a trend reshaping workplace demographics.

According to Pew Research, the workforce of adults ages 65 and older has nearly quadrupled since the mid-1980s. Nineteen percent of adults 65+ are employed today, up from 11 percent in 1987 — a significant demographic shift in how long people remain in the labor force (Pew Research Center).

Drivers include longer life expectancy, financial necessity, and flexible work structures that make later-life employment feasible. In many industries, retirees return in advisory, consulting, or operational roles, occupying positions that would otherwise turn over. This compresses the ladder from the top, further limiting mobility for those below.

Millennials in the Middle — But Not Fully Safe

Millennials have been in the workforce long enough to secure footholds in mid-level roles. They’re less exposed than Gen Z to disappearing entry points, but they too feel the squeeze: fewer openings above, increased expectations below, and shifting structures around them.

In this compressed ladder, Millennials can find themselves plateauing. They are stuck in roles where upward mobility is limited by delayed retirements and institutional bottlenecks. While Millennials may seem more secure than Gen Z, their path upward is narrowing for structural reasons, not personal failings.

💡Why This Is Structural — Not Personal

It’s tempting to frame these dynamics as a “generational issue,” but this is a structural transformation of the workforce.

✔️If AI eliminates entry-level roles, Gen Z cannot “earn their way in” through ladders that no longer exist.

✔️If older workers stay longer or return, upward pathways remain blocked.

✔️If Millennials are stuck in the middle, their ability to sponsor Gen Z below is limited.

This isn’t about work ethic or patience. It’s about how AI, automation, and aging trends are reshaping internal labor markets. This is especially true in industries dependent on deep domain knowledge.

🌱A Call to Shared, Strategic Responsibility

Letting this trend unfold passively doesn’t just leave a generation behind, it risks hollowing out organizations themselves. Without intentional action, we sacrifice the very things that keep workplaces vibrant and resilient: innovation, adaptability, and the talent pipelines that sustain long-term success.

This is not a problem any single leader or generation can solve alone. It calls for a shared, strategic response. One that brings together leadership, communities, and all generations in the workforce to rebuild pathways and transfer knowledge. To create room for new voices to grow in our workplaces.

But this is more than a moral imperative. It’s a strategic one. Too often, organizations reduce Gen Z to a set of workplace preferences to be managed. Doing so misses the deeper question:

What happens to an organization’s future when an entire generation is left standing at the base of a ladder with no rungs?

The choice to make room for the next generation will shape whether organizations remain dynamic, future-ready, and capable of sustaining growth in the years ahead.

If your organization is navigating these shifts and wondering how to build sustainable pathways for the next generation, let’s talk.

👉 Schedule a complimentary 15-minute consultation to explore how For Growth Coaching can support your leadership and workforce strategy.

📌What's Next?

In the next blog, we’ll turn to the strategic question — not what Gen Z asks for, but what they offer.