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The 2035 Job Market for Entry-Level Workers: What Kids Need to Know
BLS, McKinsey, and WEF projections for 2035 show major shifts in what entry-level work looks like—here's what today's 12-year-olds will actually face.
A 12-year-old today will graduate high school in 2031 and enter the workforce around 2033–2035, depending on how much additional education they pursue. That’s nine years from now. The 2035 labor market isn’t science fiction — BLS, McKinsey, the World Economic Forum, and OECD have all published projections based on current economic trajectories. None of them are certain. But the directional signals are consistent enough to act on. Parents who are waiting to think about this until high school are making a timing error.
Key Takeaways
- The BLS Employment Projections for 2022–2032 show healthcare, clean energy, and technology as the three fastest-growing sectors — together adding over 4 million jobs by 2032.
- McKinsey’s 2023 automation modeling suggests that by 2035, approximately 30% of current work activities could be automated — concentrated in data collection, basic data processing, and predictable physical work.
- The WEF Future of Jobs Report 2023 projects that 65% of children starting school today will work in job types that don’t yet exist — but the foundational skills those jobs require are already known.
- “Entry level” in 2035 will not mean routine task execution. AI will handle that. Entry-level workers who compete will demonstrate judgment, communication, and initiative in the tasks AI hands off.
- Geographic mobility will be a significant differentiator — the density of AI-adjacent and knowledge-economy jobs is concentrated in specific metros and growing, not spreading evenly.
What the Projections Actually Show
Three major institutions have produced labor market projections extending through 2035:
BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) Employment Projections, 2022–2032: The most granular U.S. dataset, published in 2023 and covering over 800 occupational categories, projects total employment growing by 4.7 million jobs over the decade — a 3% increase. But the distribution is stark. The fastest-growing occupational groups are:
- Healthcare support occupations (+22%)
- Computer and information technology (+15%)
- Personal care and service (+15%)
- Green energy installation and maintenance (+21%)
The occupations with the largest projected declines include office and administrative support (-3.2%), and production occupations involving routine assembly (-2.9%).
McKinsey Global Institute, “The Future of Work After COVID-19” and “A New Future of Work” (2021, 2023): McKinsey’s modeling divides work into five categories of activities: physical and manual labor (high automation risk for predictable tasks), basic cognitive (high risk — data entry, basic reporting), higher cognitive (medium risk), social and emotional (low risk), and technological expertise (growth area). Their 2035 modeling suggests that demand for physical and manual labor in predictable settings falls sharply; demand for higher-cognitive and social-emotional work rises.
World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2023: The WEF surveys employers across 45 economies about hiring expectations through 2027. The fastest-growing roles are: AI and machine learning specialists, sustainability specialists, business intelligence analysts, information security analysts, and fintech engineers. The fastest-declining roles are: bank tellers, postal service workers, cashiers, data entry clerks, and administrative secretaries.
| Sector | Projected Growth (2022–2035) | Entry-Level Opportunity | Key Driver |
|---|---|---|---|
| Healthcare | +22–30% | High | Aging population, chronic disease burden |
| Clean Energy | +21–35% | High | IRA incentives, grid modernization |
| AI/ML Technology | +30–40% | Moderate (skills bar rising) | AI buildout across industries |
| Cybersecurity | +32% | High | Threat landscape growth |
| Physical Trades (grid, infra) | +10–18% | High | Infrastructure Act spending |
| Retail/Administration | -5 to -12% | Declining | AI automation |
| Basic Data Processing | -20 to -30% | Declining | AI automation |
What “Entry Level” Means When AI Handles Routine Tasks
The concept of entry-level work was built on a model where new workers started with routine tasks — filing, data entry, basic reporting, first-draft writing, introductory customer contact — and gradually took on more complex responsibilities. This model is breaking.
By 2035, the routine task components of those entry-level roles will be handled by AI systems. What’s left is the harder part: reviewing AI outputs for accuracy, escalating edge cases, making judgment calls when the AI flags uncertainty, maintaining relationships that the AI surfaces but cannot own.
This creates a paradox: entry-level jobs in 2035 will require less routine capability and more judgment capability than entry-level jobs in 2015. Candidates who have only trained to do the routine tasks will find themselves competing with AI. Candidates who have trained to supervise, evaluate, and complement AI will have a genuine competitive edge.
A 2024 LinkedIn analysis of 700 million job postings found that postings explicitly mentioning “AI collaboration,” “AI oversight,” or “working with AI tools” grew by 142% between 2022 and 2024. In fields like marketing, law, medicine, and finance, AI tool proficiency has moved from a “nice to have” to a standard requirement in less than three years.
The Sectors With the Most Entry-Level Growth
Healthcare
Every major labor projection agrees: healthcare is the dominant job-growth story through 2035. The U.S. population is aging — the last of the Baby Boomers turn 80 in 2044, and the decade from 2025 to 2035 is the peak of their care demand. BLS projects healthcare support occupations (home health aides, personal care aides, medical assistants) growing faster than any other major category.
These roles are not primarily threatened by AI in this window. They require physical presence, emotional responsiveness, and adapting to individual patients in ways that generative AI and current robotics cannot replicate.
The entry points into healthcare for young people are well-mapped: CNA certification (often completable in high school), medical assistant programs at community colleges, and the direct pathway to nursing through ADN or BSN programs.
Clean Energy
The Inflation Reduction Act signed in 2022 committed $369 billion in climate and clean energy investments over ten years. The Department of Energy projects that the clean energy sector will need to roughly triple its workforce by 2035 to meet installation, maintenance, and grid modernization demands.
Entry-level roles with high projected growth: solar panel installers, wind turbine technicians, energy efficiency auditors, EV charging installation technicians, and battery storage systems technicians. Many of these roles are accessible through 2-year or vocational programs and pay $45,000–$70,000 at the entry level.
AI-Adjacent Technology
The AI sector itself is growing fast but raising its entry bar. The generic “learn to code” advice of 2015 is insufficient in 2025. The entry-level tech roles that are growing combine coding or data skills with domain expertise: a healthcare data analyst who understands clinical workflows, a finance ML engineer who understands credit risk, a manufacturing AI implementation specialist who understands production processes.
For more on the AI talent gap and what it means for young workers, see our in-depth analysis of what the AI talent gap means for kids entering the workforce.
The Geographic Mobility Question
Labor market projections are national averages that conceal significant geographic concentration. The industries with the most knowledge-economy growth — technology, finance, media, biotech — are densely concentrated in specific metro areas: the Bay Area, New York, Seattle, Boston, Austin, Raleigh, Denver, and a few others.
Entry-level workers who are geographically mobile — willing to move to where the jobs are concentrated — will face a meaningfully different job market than those who aren’t. This isn’t a moral argument for moving; it’s a description of where the jobs are. Parents living outside major metro areas should have this conversation with their kids honestly: geographic mobility is a real career variable, not just a lifestyle preference.
Healthcare is the major exception: healthcare demand is broadly distributed geographically, and in some rural areas the supply shortage is more acute. This makes healthcare entry-level work one of the few high-demand fields without a geographic concentration penalty.
What Skills Distinguish Competitive Entry-Level Candidates in 2035
Based on the convergence of employer survey data, WEF findings, and labor market projection trends, the skills that will distinguish competitive entry-level candidates in 2035 are not primarily technical:
Critical evaluation of AI outputs. The ability to spot when an AI system has hallucinated, missed context, or optimized for the wrong objective will be a standard workplace skill. This is a form of analytical thinking, not a technical skill.
Complex communication. As routine communication gets handled by AI, the communication that lands in a human’s hands will be the hard kind: delivering difficult feedback, managing a stakeholder who is upset, explaining nuanced technical findings to a non-technical audience.
Initiative in ambiguous situations. When a situation is outside the AI’s scripted handling — novel, ambiguous, emotionally complex — humans are still better at recognizing what to do first. This quality doesn’t develop from watching videos; it develops from practice in actual uncertain situations.
Domain fluency in a growth field. Not expertise — fluency. The ability to navigate the concepts and vocabulary of healthcare, energy, or AI systems well enough to operate in the field from day one.
Our article on future careers in the AI era for kids covers the specific preparation steps by age, and our piece on why coding still matters for kids in the AI age addresses how to think about technical skill development.
What Parents Can Do Now
The most useful things parents can do for a child who will enter the workforce in 2035 don’t involve picking a career. They involve building flexibility:
- Exposure over commitment. Between ages 10 and 15, maximize exposure to different kinds of work, problems, and fields. Don’t narrow.
- Build the judgment muscle. Give kids real decisions to own, with real consequences. Let them experience ambiguity and work through it without parental rescue.
- Develop AI familiarity. Kids who can direct, evaluate, and correct AI tools by age 16 will enter any professional environment more ready than those who haven’t.
- Geographic conversation. Honestly discuss the geography question before college decisions, not after.
What to Watch For Over the Next 3 Months
September 2026: BLS typically releases its updated 10-year employment projections in late fall. The next release will cover 2024–2034, giving the clearest picture yet of how the 2023–2026 AI disruption has reshaped projections. This is the most important single data update to watch for.
WEF Future of Jobs 2026: The WEF updates this report every two years. The next edition (expected late 2025 or early 2026) will incorporate actual AI labor market data from 2023–2025, the first full cycle of generative AI impact.
Inflation Reduction Act implementation: Watch for Department of Energy workforce announcements on clean energy training programs and registered apprenticeship expansion in clean energy trades. This is where early-access opportunities for high schoolers are most likely to appear.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is college still worth it for kids entering the workforce around 2035?
It depends on the field and the specific degree. For healthcare, tech, and engineering roles that require licensure or specific credentials, yes. For fields where AI has automated the entry-level work that a generic degree was designed to prepare for, the return is less clear. The analysis has to be field-specific, not a general “yes” or “no” on college.
What jobs will definitely exist in 2035 that aren’t being automated?
Healthcare roles requiring direct patient contact (nursing, therapy, home care), skilled trades in unpredictable physical environments (electricians, plumbers, HVAC), mental health and social work roles, education, and senior decision-making and leadership roles. These share the characteristics of requiring either physical adaptability or genuine human relationship.
Should I push my kid toward coding now to prepare for 2035?
Coding literacy is useful, but “learn to code” as a singular career strategy is less reliable than it was in 2015. The more durable strategy is domain expertise in a growth field (healthcare, clean energy, AI systems) combined with enough computational literacy to use and evaluate digital tools. Coding as a component of broader technical fluency: yes. Coding as the single bet: less compelling than it once was.
What does “entry level” pay in 2035 growth fields?
Based on current projections and wage trends: healthcare support roles ($30,000–$45,000 to start, with rapid advancement pathways); clean energy installation ($40,000–$60,000); cybersecurity ($65,000–$80,000 at entry); AI-adjacent roles in industry ($60,000–$90,000 with domain expertise). Wage compression at the bottom is likely in fields that AI automates heavily.
About the author
Ricky Flores is the founder of HiWave Makers and an electrical engineer with 15+ years of experience building consumer technology at Apple, Samsung, and Texas Instruments. He writes about how kids learn to build, think, and create in a tech-saturated world. Read more at hiwavemakers.com.
Sources
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. (2023). Employment Projections 2022–2032. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- McKinsey Global Institute. (2023). A New Future of Work: The Race to Deploy AI and Raise Skills in Europe and Beyond. https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi
- World Economic Forum. (2023). Future of Jobs Report 2023. https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2023/
- LinkedIn Economic Graph. (2025). 2025 Jobs on the Rise and Workforce Insights. https://economicgraph.linkedin.com
- U.S. Department of Energy. (2024). United States Energy and Employment Report. https://www.energy.gov/policy/us-energy-employment-jobs-report-useer
- Congressional Budget Office. (2024). Labor Market Effects of the Inflation Reduction Act. https://www.cbo.gov
- OECD. (2023). OECD Employment Outlook 2023: Artificial Intelligence and the Labour Market. https://www.oecd.org/employment/oecd-employment-outlook-19991266.htm
- Burning Glass Institute. (2024). The Emerging AI Labor Market. https://www.burningglassinstitute.org
