Copy of The AI Impact on Gen Z Jobs: Why Tacit Skills Beat Tech Fluency (TPL Insights #298)

By Rob Andrews

Why Gen Z Needs to Grow, Adapt, and Stop Hoping Their Laptop Will Save Them

Every week, another headline screams about AI-driven layoffs. Tech, finance, marketing, whole departments re-engineered overnight. But buried beneath the noise is a quieter, more troubling truth: younger workers are being hit the hardest.

A new Stanford Digital Economy Lab working paper calls them “the canaries in the coal mine.” Between late 2022 and mid-2025, early-career employees (ages 22–25) in the most AI-exposed roles saw employment declines between 6 and 12 percent, while older colleagues in the same jobs actually gained 6–9 percent in employment. Why? Because experience still matters. Older workers have what machines and interns don’t: context, judgment, and scar tissue.

Gen Z may be digital natives, but too many are mistaking familiarity with technology for fluency in its strategic use. And that gap could cost them their careers.

Why Young Workers Are Most at Risk

AI eats repetition for breakfast. Entry-level work—data entry, drafting reports, scheduling, research- is precisely what large-language models can now automate. Younger professionals, often still proving themselves through task work, suddenly find their value eroded before they’ve built enough tacit knowledge to pivot.

Meanwhile, senior employees are repackaging that same AI to multiply their impact—writing better, analyzing faster, coaching teams with data. The result? Productivity soars for the experienced and plummets for the inexperienced.

The Yale Budget Lab reports that the “AI substitution effect” is age-skewed: automation threatens early-career analytical roles (analysts, coordinators, paralegals) far more than leadership or relationship-driven jobs. In plain English, if your work can be done by software trained on yesterday’s internet, you’re disposable.

The Real Meaning of Job Security in 2025

Forget the fantasy of lifetime employment. In the AI era, job security is not about tenure; it’s about employability. The workers who thrive aren’t the ones clinging to their job titles; they’re the ones who evolve faster than their job descriptions.

Real job security means:

You do work that’s hard to automate.

You get stuff done. You’re resourceful, figure things out, and deliver value.

You’re seen as a force multiplier, not a cost center.

You are enjoyable to work with and exhibit a lot of positive energy.

You understand enough technology to leverage it, not fear it.

As the late Peter Drucker might say if he were watching this chaos unfold: your security lies in your ability to make yourself useful tomorrow, not just today.

Lessons from My 2019 Study on Graduate Preparedness

Back in 2019, my firm conducted a nationwide study for the McNair Center at Houston Christian University (then HBU) to determine how well college graduates were actually prepared for the workforce.

We surveyed over 300 CEOs, CHROs, and senior executives, asking them to rate graduates across 45 attributes. The results were sobering. The biggest deficiencies weren’t technical; they were behavioral.

Here were the five largest performance gaps, the so-called “Red Attributes”:

Thick skin: accepting feedback without crumbling.

Oral and Written communication: clarity, precision, and tone.

Servant leadership: putting the mission above ego.

Curiosity: wanting to understand how business actually works.

Common sense: yes, it still matters.

Fast-forward to 2025, and those same deficits explain why younger professionals are struggling in the age of AI. You can teach prompt engineering in a week. Teaching humility, grit, and judgment? That takes years of intentional growth.

The Five Habits That Build AI-Proof Careers

Become AI-Literate—But Don’t Stop There

Yes, you need to know how to use ChatGPT, Midjourney, or whatever emerges next. But real value comes from understanding how AI changes your field. Learn the economics, ethics, and human dynamics of it. If you’re in marketing, learn about AI-driven attribution. If you’re in finance, learn predictive modeling. Don’t just use the tools; question their assumptions.

Cultivate Your “Tacit Edge”

Tacit knowledge—judgment, pattern recognition, and interpersonal awareness- is what separates professionals from prompt-writers. Machines can summarize data; they can’t sense politics in a room, read subtle cues, or navigate ethical gray zones. Seek stretch assignments, mentors, and experiences that sharpen intuition.

That aligns with what our McNair study found: executives valued inquisitiveness, self-awareness, and resilience far more than technical prowess

Master the Art of Augmentation

If AI threatens your tasks, redesign them. Ask: What could I automate so I can spend more time thinking, creating, or connecting? When you use AI to eliminate busy work, you’re not erasing your job; you’re upgrading it.

In peak performance cultures, leaders see technology as an amplifier of human capability, not a substitute. That’s how Delta’s Ed Bastian and Best Buy’s Hubert Joly (two of my favorite case studies) used technology: to deepen human connection, not replace it.

Build Cross-Functional Fluency

The most AI-resilient professionals bridge silos. They can talk to coders, marketers, and finance alike. They understand enough about business models, customer experience, and cost drivers to join any strategic conversation.

That’s what’s called the T-shaped leader, broad knowledge across disciplines with depth in one. In our research on top-performing organizations, this trait shows up repeatedly in people who ascend fastest.

Be Seen, Be Useful, Be Coachable

Early career professionals often overestimate visibility and underestimate reliability. In volatile times, leaders keep the people they trust. Those who ask good questions, accept feedback, and own results become non-negotiable.

Coachability, the ability to absorb and act on criticism, was the single biggest deficit in our 2019 data set. Ironically, it’s also the easiest to fix. It just requires humility.

Gen Z’s Hidden Advantage

For all the bad press, Gen Z has one superpower: adaptability. They grew up in chaos, pandemics, economic shocks, and digital acceleration, and they’re still standing. That’s resilience in action.

If they channel that adaptability into disciplined curiosity, emotional intelligence, and cross-generational learning, they’ll leapfrog older workers who resist change. But it starts with dropping the victim mindset.

Stop saying, “AI is taking my job.” Start saying, “AI is changing my job, and I’m changing faster.”

The Growth Mindset in Action

Carol Dweck’s research on growth vs. fixed mindset has never been more relevant. A fixed mindset worker says, “I’m not technical, so I can’t learn this.” A growth-minded worker says, “I don’t know this yet, but I can learn fast.”

Organizations that survive disruption reward the second kind. They invest in continuous learning, experimentation, and collaboration. The same principle applies to individuals: if you’re not actively learning, you’re actively becoming obsolete.

Make learning part of your routine: one new skill a quarter, one book a month, one conversation a week with someone outside your department. The compound interest of curiosity is relevance.

Building Culture-Level Resilience

Leaders reading this: the same logic applies to your workforce. Job security isn’t something you “give” employees, it’s something you build into the culture.

Our Total Performance Leadership research at Allen Austin shows that top-performing companies create environments where employees:

Understand purpose (why their work matters).

See growth paths (learning never stops).

Feel safe failing forward (experimentation without punishment).

These aren’t soft ideals; they are performance levers. In firms with strong learning cultures, layoffs become strategic redeployments, not bloodbaths.

So, How Do You Actually Protect Yourself?

Here’s your quick-hit checklist for staying indispensable in the AI era:

Audit your role: What parts could AI do tomorrow? What can only you do?

Upskill with purpose: Learn tools that increase your leverage, not just your résumé length.

Network horizontally: Build alliances beyond your team—human networks are automation-proof.

Document your wins: Track measurable results so you can prove value when the org chart shakes.

Stay mission-driven: When you tie your work to purpose, leaders notice. Passion is hard to outsource.

Final Thoughts

AI isn’t coming for everyone’s job—it’s coming for everyone’s excuses.

For Gen Z and early-career professionals, this is both a threat and an invitation. The threat: low-value tasks vanish fast. The invitation: you can design a career around creativity, empathy, and strategic thinking, skills machines still can’t fake.

In 2019, our research showed that graduates who combined curiosity, humility, and grit stood out from the pack. In 2025, the same truth applies, only now the stakes are higher.

The future belongs to those who learn faster than technology evolves. So, build your skills, harden your mindset, and keep proving your value, not by what you know, but by how fast you can grow.

Warmest,

Rob Andrews

Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Celebrating 28 years of Executive Search, Leadership Advisory, and Interim Executive Excellence

Direct: 713.489.9724/ Mobile: 713.301.6130

4801 Woodway Dr., Suite 130W, Houston, TX, 77056

www.roberta348.sg-host.com Link to Allen Austin Overview

Link to Total Performance Leadership Overview

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References

Brynjolfsson, E., Chandar, N., & Chen, J. (2025). Canaries in the Coal Mine: Early Career Workers and the AI Shock. Stanford Digital Economy Lab.

Budget Lab at Yale University. (2025). Evaluating the Impact of AI on the Labor Market: The Current State of Affairs. Yale University Press.

Andrews, R. (2023). 360-Degree Graduate Attribute Assessment. Allen Austin / The McNair Center at Houston Christian University.

Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House.

New York Post. (2025, July 31). Gen Z workers eye blue-collar jobs amid AI fears.