In August, the UK expanded its Global Talent visa to over 100 research businesses, allowing firms like AstraZeneca and Jaguar Land Rover to recruit researchers in AI, clean energy and life sciences. This is a trend across European governments, who are targeting overseas talent in order to compete globally.
Yet recruiting specialists addresses only part of the problem. Europe also needs new entrants to replenish its workforce. The Linux Foundation expects AI deployment to drive a 27% net increase in European technical roles in 2026. However, entry-level hiring shrank by 3% in 2025, compared with a 14% global increase. There's a clear picture that demand is rising just as traditional pathways narrow.
The queue for entry
This weakness is not specific to young talent. An unpublished analysis of EU Labour Force Survey data by Dragos Adascalitei, a research officer at Eurofound, shows employment growing in high-AI occupations. Between 2019 and 2025, young worker employment in these roles rose 16.4%, versus 15% for prime-age staff.
Jobs are not being destroyed, but the queue for entry lengthens
The more revealing metric is recruitment. Among young workers in those occupations, new hires fell 15% between 2022 and 2025 — nearly identical to the 15.6% drop among prime-age workers.
“The effect is real, and it is concentrated where the technology is used, but it is not youth specific,” Adascalitei says.
The slowdown is concentrated among lower-educated youth. Tertiary-educated workers remain the only group above 2019 employment levels. For Adascalitei, the risk is persistent stagnation.
“Jobs are not being destroyed," he says, "but the queue for entry lengthens." If fewer people enter from outside, the route into senior expertise narrows over time.
A low entry point
Indeed data shows UK job postings fell 11% between early 2026 and mid-July, with graduate postings down 7% to their lowest seasonal level since 2020. Simultaneously, AI featured in a record 9.4% of postings across marketing, finance and research.
“Entry-level hiring typically slows first and hardest whenever the wider labour market cools,” says Jack Kennedy, senior economist at Indeed. “But AI is tending to reinforce that cyclical weakness, while reshaping what an entry-level role looks like in the process.”
Entry-level hiring typically slows first and hardest whenever the wider labour market cools
PwC’s 2026 UK AI Jobs Barometer points to a similar shift. Its analysis shows that UK roles where AI absorbs routine tasks and demands human-intensive skills — such as leadership, judgement and strategic decision-making — are growing more than twice as fast as roles where technology merely simplifies routine work.
The entry point into technical and knowledge work is not simply getting narrower. It's changing.
A demographic constraint
Europe has little room to let its talent pipeline weaken. Adascalitei describes demographic ageing as the “binding constraint” on the continent’s longer-term supply of skilled workers.
The EU27 working-age population has fallen by nearly 10 million since 2009, though higher female participation and longer careers boosted total employment. Workers aged 55 and over rose from 23.8 million in 2010 to nearly 40 million in 2023.
The Linux Foundation found European organisations are 3.7 times more likely to prioritise upskilling than hiring across strategic technology domains, warning that entry-level contractions risk future senior shortages.
For Europe, talent policy is becoming industrial policy. Companies must invest in training and entry pathways, while governments need policies making junior hiring attractive, from AI-focused apprenticeships to targeted tax incentives.
Economies that do both will translate technological investment into lasting growth.
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