Artificial intelligence has not been around long enough to reward seniority the way most fields do, and that gap is starting to show up in who gets hired.<\/p>\n
Generation Z accounted for 69% of new hires for two of the highest-paying individual contributor roles in AI in 2025, forward-deployed engineers and AI engineers, The Wall Street Journal reported<\/a> Tuesday (Aug. 18). The median annual salary is $199,000 for a forward-deployed engineer and $166,000 for an AI engineer, according to LinkedIn research<\/a> published in August.<\/p>\n Millennials, by contrast, dominated the layer just above that, claiming 60% of new \u201chead of AI\u201d roles in 2025, the WSJ reported, a role that pays a median annual salary of $236,000, per the LinkedIn research.<\/p>\n \u201cCompanies are just gorging on AI talent,\u201d said Kory Kantenga<\/a>, LinkedIn\u2019s head of economics for the Americas, CBS News reported<\/a> April 16.<\/p>\n The split compresses a career timeline that has traditionally taken a decade or more. A company hiring for AI engineering roles is not primarily rewarding years of institutional tenure. It is rewarding hands-on technical fluency with a technology that barely existed five years ago, giving some young workers leverage against colleagues.<\/p>\n That leverage is already showing up in the hiring data. AI job postings on LinkedIn grew 156% between 2024 and 2025, following 14% growth the year before, CNBC reported<\/a> Tuesday. The typical AI role now pays a median annual salary of $177,000, more than double the $80,000 median for non-AI roles.<\/p>\n Same AI Boom Is Cutting Off the Bottom Rung<\/p>\n The shift is arriving at the same time AI is eliminating much of the entry-level work young people have always used to build a career. Workers aged 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed occupations have seen a 19% relative decline in employment<\/a> as of June, up from a 15% shortfall a year earlier, according to the Stanford Digital Economy Lab<\/a>, which has tracked the gap widening steadily since it first identified the pattern in August 2025.<\/p>\n The decline is concentrated in occupations where companies use AI to automate tasks outright rather than assist a worker doing them, the Stanford study said. It shows up almost entirely through reduced hiring of young workers rather than layoffs of people already employed.<\/p>\n \u201cIn occupations where AI is used more to complement workers, employment is flat or rising, particularly among more experienced workers,\u201d the Stanford study said.<\/p>\n That is not incidental to the AI hiring boom. It is the other half of the same shift.<\/p>\n AI is displacing the routine work junior employees have always used to prove themselves, while simultaneously creating a narrow set of highly paid technical roles that reward the specific young workers who have real AI expertise. A young worker who can build and deploy AI systems is being pulled ahead of colleagues a decade older. A young worker without those specific skills is competing for a shrinking pool of the entry-level jobs that used to be the default starting point for almost everyone.<\/p>\n Access to the Fast Track Is Narrower Than It Looks<\/p>\n The path into these high-paying AI roles is also less open than the headline growth numbers suggest. The LinkedIn research said 91% of AI workers hold at least a bachelor\u2019s degree, a share that exceeds 95% in several of the highest-paying AI occupations.<\/p>\n Women made up just 26% of new AI hires in 2025, compared with 50% of hires in non-AI occupations, LinkedIn reported<\/a> Tuesday. The gap widened further up the pay scale, as women accounted for 20% of \u201chead of AI\u201d hires, one of the highest-paying categories in the entire AI job market.<\/p>\n What emerges is a labor market splitting in two directions. A narrow group of young, technically fluent workers is being promoted faster and paid more than any previous generation at the same career stage. Everyone else, including many young workers without a technical degree or specific AI skills, is competing for a shrinking supply of the entry-level roles that used to be everyone\u2019s way in.<\/p>\n