Remote Work Hurts Entry-Level Hiring More Than AI, Study Finds; Sam Altman Admits Forecast Was Wrong

The rise of remote and hybrid work since the pandemic has made the way companies train new employees a key factor in the contraction of entry-level opportunities. Research by the London School of Economics and the Allen Institute for AI found that remote settings raise the cost of supervision, training and mentorship, weakening employers’ incentives to hire inexperienced workers. The findings also challenge the notion that AI alone is rapidly displacing new graduates.

Published in May 2026, the study analyzed 243 million résumés from new hires between 2017 and 2025, as well as 407 million job postings in the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia. By 2025, entry-level hiring in occupations with high exposure to remote work had generally fallen by 4–5 percentage points, while the U.S. figure was 29% below its pre-pandemic level. On May 26, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged that AI was eliminating entry-level white-collar jobs more slowly than he had expected, though he said it would still automate basic tasks.