- Anthropic says it is no longer hiring so many junior/entry-level roles
- Many technical workers are becoming AI managers, and so are spending more time in meetings
- The company says its "deep adoption" makes it a useful "early warning system" for AI's impacts
One of the biggest AI developers in the world has released a brand-new study on how AI is transforming its own workforce - but we're not sure whether it's good or bad news.
Starting off with the bad news, Anthropic uncovered a considerable drop in junior workers – junior workers accounted for just 14% of technical staff by mid-2026, down from 21% in early 2025.
The proportion of junior employees among the company's new technical hires fell even more dramatically in the same period, from 27% to just 9%.
Is AI replacing some workers, but not all?
Ultimately, the paper concludes that artificial intelligence is handling more and more entry-level roles, therefore Anthropic hasn't needed to hire as many junior workers.
In fact, hiring on the whole has seemingly dropped thanks to AI-induced productivity gains. "[Anthropic] has hired less per dollar of revenue than an earlier generation of large tech companies," the company explained.
Crucially, the Claude maker isn't reporting a declining technical workforce. Quite the opposite, as it continues to grow, but those technical workers are now handling higher-level, managerial-type roles.
AI's biggest impact at Anthropic has been the number of code commits per engineer, up 5.1x from the end of 2025 to mid-2026. Data queries per data scientist (up 3.1x), contracts per legal worker (up 3.1x) and deals per salesperson (up 1.7x) are also all trending upward.
Humans remain in the loop
More broadly, the company sees many workers transitioning into decision-making roles, and that's increased the amount of time they spend in meetings. A 20% median increase was observed across the workforce.
"Engineers described becoming leaders and managers of agents; non-technical employees described doing more and more of the strategic parts of their job."
Despite massive productivity gains through automation, Anthropic also confirmed that some roles just have to remain human. They include things like sales calls and interviews.
Still, human workers are seen as something of a bottleneck in the world of AI. Claude spends around 80% of interactive session time waiting for human input, the research revealed.
Looking ahead, Anthropic has projected where we could be heading and how things could change with all employers. One of the biggest shifts could come in hiring, where a new set of skills is likely to be prioritized – including "autonomy and judgment."
A more optimistic approach admits that hiring is indeed falling, but job opportunities could actually be exploding. "One possibility is single-person start-ups, each with a human founder steering swarms of agents to rake in billions in revenue."
Ultimately, Anthropic says its "deep adoption of AI... makes it a useful case," and that it exists as an "early warning system" – so maybe we look at AI companies to see how AI is going to impact jobs?
