The kicked-away career ladder and how we plan for the future of entry level jobs
A UK government review says the bottom rungs of the career ladder have been removed for a generation. A study of AI in public relations spotlights the issue in my own industry.
Nearly a million young people in the UK - one in eight of those aged 16 to 24 - are not in education, employment or training (NEET). Almost three-in-five are economically inactive, neither working nor looking for work.
Milburn is clear that this is not the fault of a workshy generation. In a survey for the review, 84% of those who are NEET said they want to work, study or train. The barrier sits on the government and employer side of the table.
The review puts it bluntly. The bottom rungs of the career ladder have been kicked away. Entry-level roles are fewer are far between and ask for more.
This is the same argument that has recently been made by a European study of our own industry.
The same pattern in public relations practice
It’s a preprint and has not yet been through peer review. There are gaps that review will catch, but its key argument is well made.
The story we tell ourselves in practice about AI is typically a comforting one. Machines take the routine work (media monitoring, first drafts and scheduling), freeing practitioners to focus on the higher-value work of counsel and judgement.
AI does the routine stuff and clears a path for the practitioner to reach management.
But Da Silva Jorge thinks that this is only half the story. The augmentation is real enough for the people describing it. Senior practitioners experience AI as a multiplier that drives effectiveness and efficiency benefits.
The trouble is the practitioners on the rungs below them. Those routine tasks that AI takes over first are how junior practitioners have built the skills and judgement that lets them climb into the senior role. The ladder goes when you take that bottom rung away.
This is the same career ladder that Milburn is describing. The government review identifies a reduction in entry-level work across the UK economy. Da Silva Jorge study spotlights it happening our industry for much the same reason.
Why this is a management question and not just a jobs question
Da Silva Jorge frames this as an employment problem about jobs, skills and displacement. This is where most of the analysis about the impact of AI in PR sits.
The question the study doesn’t quite ask is the more interesting one. How does this sit with public relations practice holding its claim to be a management function?
The apprenticeship or entry level learning model does more than pass on skills. It’s how a practitioner earns a place in management.
Regulation sharpens the position. The European Union’s AI Act, under Article 4, requires organisations to make sure staff have a sufficient level of AI literacy. It has been on statute since February 2025 and is enforceable by EU member countries from August 2026.
Here’s the irony. The on-the-job route to literacy is being automated away at the very moment that formal AI literacy becomes a legal requirement.
Training will teach a practitioner to drive the tools and stay on the right side of the rules. It will not, on its own, build the judgement of entry level pathways into a professional role.
What this means for communications leaders
Milburn’s charge is that the country saw the kicked-away ladder coming and acted too late. The lesson for public relations practice is to move before the evidence is complete.
Be honest about what AI literacy training is
It is necessary and it is a legal duty within the EU. It is also no substitute for judgement. Anyone selling it as such is overpromising.
Rebuild entry-level roles deliberately
The formative experiences that built senior judgement must be designed back in on purpose, through real strategic problems, mentoring and practice, rather than left to fall out of work that no longer exists.
Take the succession question to management
This is not really a training issue. It is a question about whether public relations practice can still grow its own senior practitioners.
Milburn says the social contract, namely that each generation should do better than the last, is has broken. Da Silva Jorge asks a different version of the same question.
Who, 15 years from now, will have earned the right to be listened to and will anyone in the room have come up the way that right was always earned?
The answer depends on whether we rebuild the ladder or watch while it’s kicked away.
Further reading
This essay was originally posted on my Substack. The Wadds Inc. newsletter is read by more than 5,000 communications and public relations practitioners. We take a slower, critical perspective on the research, evidence and developments shaping the field.
