Good morning. There's genuine concern to be had over AI's broad-reaching impacts on the labor market, but here's one bright spot: Hiring for AI-related roles is continuing to surge, and younger workers are the ones nabbing the jobs.

"While hiring overall is down compared to last year, and it's way down compared to prior to the pandemic, this is one area of the labor market that's quite robust," LinkedIn's head of economics for the Americas, Kory Kantenga, told me.

And contrary to some expectations, the younger generation is benefiting. LinkedIn data shows that 69% of AI engineer hires and 68% of forward deployed engineer hires in 2025 were members of Gen Z, a cohort that's grown up adapting to the cutting-edge technology in a way older workers haven't. Meanwhile, 60% of "head of AI" hires in 2025 were millennials.

"Most of the workers who have been hired into AI roles in the last year are actually Gen Z," he said. "We talk about how they're worried about AI, and there are certainly legitimate concerns that AI may be harming the job market for younger workers...but right now we actually see AI providing a green shoot for some of these younger workers."

Some members of the AI-native Gen Z are even taking their expertise as far as the C-suite.

But it's not all sunshine and roses

The growth in AI-related jobs isn't a boon for everyone. Education remains a barrier, with 90% of hires for AI-related jobs having a bachelor's degree and 20% of hires for AI leadership jobs having a doctorate. And women still remain an underrepresented group, only making up 26% of AI hires in 2025, according to Kantenga.

"There's a lot of momentum there, but not everyone is able to take advantage of it," he said.

"So what should I tell my kid to study in school?"

This is something people ask me all the time. Apparently the same is true for Kantenga. Eager, worried parents always want to know what career they can push their teenagers into that feels "futureproof."

Kantenga laughed when I posed it to him, saying his usual gut reaction to the question is to slink away like the meme of Homer Simpson retreating into the bushes.

But I pushed him for a real answer. And he told me that while, yes, there is a ton of opportunity in AI right now-and those that pursue higher education degrees are more likely to be employed and have higher lifetime earnings-there's always a hidden cost to pursuing a career that isn't the thing you're passionate about.

In his words: "At the end of the day, we can talk about where there is momentum, where there is opportunity. For some people, if you come from a modest background, being unemployed is not an option. So you need to pursue an area where there is momentum." But he added, "Beyond that, it really is about what people are passionate about, what they're interested in, what problems they want to solve in the world. I think that's really up to the individual to decide that."

On Our Radar

OpenAI has signed a 10-gigawatt data-center deal in Ohio with SoftBank's SB Energy that is partly backed by Nvidia, a project expected to become one of the largest artificial-intelligence hubs to date, The Wall Street Journal reports. The deal is backed by a commitment from Nvidia aimed at helping the developer raise debt financing without exposing the chip maker to a substantial amount of risk, people familiar with the matter said.

Anthropic's annual run rate reached $65 billion at the end of July, Bloomberg reported. The figure represents a sevenfold increase from a year ago and comes as the AI giant gears up for an IPO. At chief rival OpenAI, the annualized revenue run rate recently hit $40 billion, CNBC reported last week.

Startup Etched, which makes AI chips for inference workloads, just signed Jane Street as its first customer, The Wall Street Journal reports. The secretive Wall Street quantitative trading giant is buying a server rack filled with AI processors optimized for rapid inference computing. In parallel, Jane Street is leading a new $700 million funding round that values Etched at $21 billion, the two firms said.

Logistics operators are continuing to bet big on robots, The Wall Street Journal reports. North American companies ordered nearly 18,000 robots valued at about $1.2 billion in the first half of this year, according to a recent report from the Association for Advancing Automation. That was up 2% from the same period last year in terms of units ordered and about 7% in value.

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About Us

Follow Isabelle Bousquette on LinkedIn, Instagram, X, and TikTok for more behind the scenes on her tech and AI coverage, and lately, her contributions to the WSJ Leadership Institute's new Executive Resilience series, where she's profiling America's top execs about their fitness and wellness habits.

Follow Belle Lin on LinkedIn and X for her latest reporting on enterprise technology and AI.

Steven Rosenbush is chief of the enterprise technology bureau at the WSJ Leadership Institute. He also has a column. You can follow him on LinkedIn.

Tom Loftus is the editor of The Morning Download. He suggests following Isabelle, Belle and Steve on their various social channels. But if you insist, here's his LinkedIn.