#99: AI: Entry-Level Job Killer, or Mirage?
About Andy Sitison
Andy Sitison is a strategic creative—an accomplished engineer, artist, and serial entrepreneur with over 30 years of high-tech experience—who is now dedicated to pioneering Empathetic AI.
A practical AI expert, Andy guides global companies through digital transformation, focusing on augmenting the human experience rather than just the technology. For nearly a decade, he has designed and deployed sophisticated AI models, specializing in Natural Language Processing (NLP). His work with the SEEQ platform utilizes custom Large Language Models (LLMs) to perform deep story analysis, generating emotional scores and emotive personas to help communities truly understand themselves while safeguarding individual privacy.
Holding degrees in business, data management, and psychology, Andy uses his analytical and human-centric background to ensure data products genuinely represent the individual in the digital age.
Beyond his career, he is a dedicated environmentalist and community leader, serving as VP of NAPS, where he co-founded a successful Ghost Pot Retrieval project in the Chesapeake Bay. He also helps students learn STEM through boat building, and a is constantly in the water cleaning up the shorelines, or just having fun.
Andy is a problem-solver who rides the wave of emerging technology—from assembler to augmented reality—always transforming systems to elevate human potential.
Andy’s Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-sitison/
https://tinyurl.com/HeadandHeart-Empathy-Stores-AI
https://www.linkedin.com/company/share-more-stories
SUMMARY:
Episode 99 is about claims that AI is eliminating entry-level white-collar jobs, reviewed an Atlantic article arguing unemployment statistics can be misleading, and featured guest Andy Sitison discussing how AI is changing work and recommendations for graduates and educators. The session ended with production logistics for the episode and an offer for the guest to review materials.
Discussion of the Atlantic article summarized that headline unemployment rates can be a statistical mirage because people who stop job-searching are excluded; deeper measures show worse outcomes for non-degree young workers while college-educated recent graduates may see modest gains in AI-intensive sectors. The conversation emphasized that headline data can misrepresent labor-market pain and that sector- and credential-specific outcomes differ.
Andy Sitison framed AI as part of a longer automation trend and centralized corporate incentives, arguing impact depends on specific tasks and capitalist adoption drivers. He described current AI as systems that emulate intelligence, excel at large-scale pattern analysis and complex data tasks, but still hallucinate and require human oversight for final decisions.
Practical advice for audiences: incoming college graduates should prioritize local human connections, learn how AI works from a user perspective, and position themselves to apply new technologies inside organizations. Educators should integrate AI into curricula in controlled, contextual ways, teach provenance and fraud detection, define where AI is permitted, and foster a passion for learning over purely test-based assessment.
SHOW NOTES:
Episode 99: AI: Entry-Level Job Killer, or Mirage?
HOF 3 out of 5
For: People who want to REALLY understand AI, and its impact. In this case – AI’s impact to the Job market.
The World Economic Forum recently warned that artificial intelligence could disrupt millions of white-collar jobs, while simultaneously redefining what employers value most in human workers. That is consistent with the general concern about AI: it is a job-stealer; especially for entry-level white-collar jobs.
Or is it?
A recent article in the Atlantic entitled “Young People Are Falling Behind, but Not Because of AI” examined the impact of AI on the job market observed that the data does not point to AI killing the jobs of young people, but young people are losing their jobs in general. In fact, the article argues that AI might be increasing employment for college-educated workers.
According to the article,
The case that AI is already stealing young people’s jobs is based on a statistical mirage. Historically, recent college graduates have had a much lower unemployment rate than the average worker. Since ChatGPT was released, however, the unemployment rate for this group has risen nearly twice as fast as the overall number. Because AI is best suited to replacing white-collar workers, this trend is what you’d expect to see if AI was having a labor-market impact.
But the unemployment rate can be a highly misleading statistic. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts individuals as “unemployed” only if they’ve actively looked for work in the past four weeks; otherwise, they are removed from the data set. The rationale is to avoid counting people who don’t actually want a job, such as students, retirees, and stay-at-home parents. But it also excludes people who want to work but have stopped looking for a job.
The economists Adam Ozimek and Nathan Goldschlag recently took a deeper look at the data and found that a significant number of young workers without college degrees had simply given up looking for a job, artificially improving the unemployment rate for young workers without a degree and thereby giving the appearance that recent college graduates were doing uniquely poorly. This is the labor-market equivalent of a school’s worst-performing students simply not showing up on standardized-test day.
Using a different employment measure that includes all working-age adults 25 and younger (except full-time students), Ozimek and Goldschlag found that those without degrees have experienced an even worse decline than their college-educated peers since 2023. “It turns out the labor market for young people—all young people—is even worse than we thought,” Goldschlag told me. “That makes me doubt that this is an AI story.”
In fact, AI might be increasing employment for college-educated workers. One 2025 analysis found that since the release of ChatGPT, recent graduates in sectors with more AI usage have experienced slightly better employment outcomes than they did prior to its release. In an August survey of businesses from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a larger share of firms reported hiring more workers due to AI than reported hiring fewer.
So what is true?
Here with me to discuss all of this today is Andy “Citizen” Sitison. Andy is CTO of Share More Stories. He is a veteran technology strategist and AI expert with 30 years of experience in cloud transformation, data analytics, and custom LLM deployment focused on human-centered AI and digital engagement.
Is AI killing entry level jobs today, or do you agree with the article that it is a mirage?
TRANSCRIPT
0:00 – David W. Schropfer
Welcome back everybody to DIY Cyber Guy.
0:07 – Unidentified Speaker
And okay.
0:09 – David W. Schropfer
And the way I have this set up, the camera should, the image should stay on you. So when I make the promotional videos after, you’re not seeing me answering my dumb questions, asking my dumb questions. We’re just seeing you being brilliant. That’s the idea. All right. Sounds great.
0:28 – Andy Sitison
All right, here we go.
0:36 – David W. Schropfer
Welcome back, everybody, to DIY Cyber Guy. This is episode 99, AI, Entry-Level Job Killer or Mirage? This is a hair on fire three out of five, meaning that really something you should understand, especially if you’re really curious about AI and its impact, specifically its impact to jobs and the job market. So the World Economic Forum recently warned that artificial intelligence could disrupt millions of white-collar jobs while simultaneously redefining what employers value most in human workers. And we’ve talked about some of these themes on the podcast already. That’s consistent with a general concern about AI that many of us have, which is it’s a job stealer, especially for entry-level white collar jobs, or is it? So in a recent article, in a recent article in The Atlantic entitled, Young People Are Falling Behind, But Not Because of AI, this article examined the impact of AI on the job market, and it observed that the data does not point to AI killing the jobs of young people, but young people are losing their jobs in general. In fact, the article argues that AI might actually be increasing employment for college-educated young workers. So I’m going to read you a quote from the article. I’m quoting now. The case that AI is already stealing young people’s jobs is based on a statistical mirage. Historically, recent college graduates have had much lower unemployment rates than the average worker. Since ChatGPT was released, however, the unemployment rate for this group has risen nearly twice as fast as the overall number. Because AI is best suited to replacing white-collar workers, this trend is what you’d expect to see if AI was having a labor market impact. But the unemployment rate can be a highly misleading statistic. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics counts individuals as, quote, unemployed only if they’ve actively looked for work in the past four weeks. Otherwise, they’re removed from the data set. The rationale is avoiding counting people who don’t actually want a job, such as students, retirees, and stay-at-home parents. But it also excludes people who want to work but have stopped looking for a job. The economists Adam Ozmek and Nathan Goldschlag recently took a deeper dive into that data and found that a significant number of young workers without college degrees had simply given up, had simply given up looking for a job, artificially improving the unemployment rate for young workers without a degree. Let me try that again. The economists Adam Osmek and Nathan Goldschlag recently took a deeper dive into the data and found that a significant number of young workers without college degrees had simply given up looking for a job, artificially improving the unemployment rate for young workers without a degree. Thereby giving the appearance that recent college graduates were doing uniquely poorly. This is the labor market equivalent of a school’s worst performing students simply not showing up for a standardized test day. Using different employment measures includes all, let’s try that again.
4:04 – Andy Sitison
I’m great at a lot of things, Andy, but reading out loud is definitely not one of them. That’s what recording is all about.
4:11 – David W. Schropfer
That’s what recording, Right.
4:14 – Andy Sitison
All right.
4:19 – David W. Schropfer
Using a different employment measure that includes all working age adults, except full-time students, the two scientists found out that those without degrees have experienced an even worse decline than their college-educated peers And it’s quoting the scientists as saying, turns out the labor market for young people all young people is even worse than we thought. That makes me doubt this AI is a story.
4:50 – David W. Schropfer
In fact, AI might be increasing employment for college-educated workers. One 2025 analysis found that since the release of Chats GPT, recent graduates in sectors with more AI usage have experienced slightly better employment outcomes than they did years prior to the release of Chats GPT. In an August survey of last year of businesses from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a large share of firms reported hiring more workers due to AI as opposed to fewer workers. So what is true? Here with me to talk about all this today is Andy Citizen. Andy is the CTO of ShareMore Stories. He is a veteran technology strategist and AI expert with 30 years of experience in cloud transformation, data analytics, and custom large language model deployment, and focused on human-centric AI and digital engagement. Welcome, Andy. Well, thanks for having me out. Thanks for being here. So here’s the first question. Is AI killing entry-level job stay, or do you agree with the article that it’s a mirage?
6:01 – David W. Schropfer
Yeah, it’s a great question, right?
6:03 – Andy Sitison
And you know what’s interesting, before I answer that, I’m going to leave you hanging a second and say, what was really interesting was the nuance and the complexity of what it took to explain the situation, right? And it left you with not a black and white answer, but a little bit of gray and a little bit of black and white. And so I think that is a fair statement. I do think it is absolutely impacting jobs. It’s impacting jobs from a transformation standpoint. And as an inflection point, It is one of the most unique technologies we’ve deployed. And I’ve been watching technology for almost 40 years now and helping get those out into companies and businesses. At the same time, it’s more about what the job is than who, than is it a full black and white total loss of jobs. And it’s not just AI that’s impacting here. And we love to use the word AI, two little letters that represents everything we’re talking right now. But let’s be honest, most of what we talk about AI is at least a major minority or a majority capitalism. It’s more about how it’s being applied, where’s the profit motive for that, and how that’s impacting how consumers consume it, right? And so those are more capitalistic decisions, consumer decisions. And each of those are also kind of weighing in on, you know, where the jobs are, and how many people are actually looking. To your point, I’ll finish with, with saying that there’s people in that list that are going, hey, you know what? I’m just not in the job market anymore. So there’s a change in the way we are choosing to live all at the same time.
7:43 – David W. Schropfer
Well, thinking about it in this way, I mean, we’ll never know what this generation, the people in 2026 who are recent graduates, college graduates, or even high school graduates, would they be experiencing the same level of unemployment if AI didn’t exist? Obviously, we’ll never know the answer to that. But do you think AI is making an impact already today? Because as the article pointed out, chat GPT has only been around a couple of years, really, at this point. And all the impact it’s had, it’s had basically in the before maybe 30 months?
8:28 – Andy Sitison
Yeah, so I’m going to answer that two ways. One is to say, I do believe AI has impacted jobs. And it’s a continuation of something that’s been going on for at least a decade, which is called automation or algorithmic automation.
8:40 – David W. Schropfer
And we started learning and things in that bucket, right?
8:44 – Andy Sitison
Yeah, it’s how do we automate jobs? How do we get rid of jobs? Essentially, it was the goal of those initial ideas. And AI is a tool set that is taking us to a new level there. Again, that is like, that’s technology adoption that’s been going on for a decade or more. And those intentions are to reduce jobs. And there’s another major movement that’s going on in corporations for at least since the 2010s. And that is centralization. Like when you don’t innovate, one way to keep growing your business is to merge and then to get rid of shared services, right? So you have companies that will slowly get bigger and also centralized operations. So you’ll see smaller regional, like when I started my career in the 90s, you know, there was a tech company in every little town, moderate city all over the country. And you could get a decent tech job anywhere you want to go. Now they’re building 40,000 acre data centers in Oregon, right? So everything’s getting consolidated. So sometimes, depending on the geography, jobs aren’t there. It’s not AI, but AI is absolutely a part of that, right? Because part of what’s getting deployed is that next wave of technology. And AI is uniquely sentient. And that’s a heavy statement. I overstate there. It feels sentient. It simulates sentience, right? It does help automate in a real interesting way. And here’s, I’m going to leave you with one last hook here. And that is, it’s actually smarter than us in certain ways, right? Like if we do story analysis, so imagine I give you 500 stories and ask you to read them and tell me the themes. You’re not going to remember much, right? It’s going to take you a week and you’re not going to remember much. The AI can do it in five minutes and give me all that data without losing it. So it’s smarter than us in certain ways that we are gonna be challenged and we’re gonna have to think about humans.
10:41 – David W. Schropfer
Would you call that, and sorry to interrupt. No, no, you shouldn’t. Would you call that smarter, per se, or just a better analyst?
10:50 – Andy Sitison
Yeah.
10:51 – David W. Schropfer
Because back to your question, you could say, read all these stories, get back to me, it would take me a week to do it. And depending on how good or bad my notes are, maybe I can recap it and tell you the themes. But I could you how they made me feel? And did it bring up childhood memories? Or did it make me happy or sad? Or was there an emotional component to the themes? And that’s where we, you know, hopefully for a very, very long time, will be differentiated from AI, wouldn’t you agree?
11:21 – Andy Sitison
Well, you know, it’s interesting, because, you know, our company, what we do, we study stories, and we do it on attitudes and emotions. So we study anxiety, joy, we look for evidence of those things in those stories. So we’re are actually emulating that example. But with that said, I agree with you. It’s a technology. Our mind’s a technology for that matter, if you want to look at it that way. But it is a technology that is not intelligent and smarter. It’s emulating intelligence. What it does is has a great cache. It has a really good ability to process algorithms. And it can retain an evaluation of something and then provide that back. So what we use it for is complex pattern decision-making and looking for things in the data. We don’t trust it to make final decisions, because it’s good at certain things and it’s not good at certain things. And we all know about hallucinations, as they like to call it. You’re talking to an AI agent and it’s going well, and the fourth question, you’re like, why did you bring up football? Wait, wait, are you even on the data we’re talking about?
12:28 – Andy Sitison
it just lost you, right? And so there’s a lot of reason for humans to be in that process. And I think it’s, as always, it’s about where does the human fit best and where does the technology fit best? And so that’s that moment. It’s such a big change and transformation that we’re all scratching our head and feeling a little nervous that we’re gonna look like a science fiction movie here in a little bit. But I think humans still have a big place in that.
12:55 – David W. Schropfer
Okay.
12:57 – David W. Schropfer
season for colleges around the country, if you were on a podium right now with a microphone talking to a stadium full of, you know, soon-to-be college graduates, like soon-to-be, by the end of the day, they’re going to be college graduates, what would you tell them on the topic of AI?
13:17 – Andy Sitison
Yeah, well, I would tell them to connect locally first. I would say your job doesn’t matter you don’t give your job 30 don’t give the best of you for 30 years to your job because I would on the opposite side say go and make local connections wherever you land meet people be part of something be on a kayaking group or be a you know help people learn to read or you know work at a food bank whatever it is connect locally with people because those connections and that that sent that kind of the soul of you that vibe of you will also pay back in your job, because I think we all need context. The world is so digital, and it can come to us at any time of the day, right? In all times of the day, we never get away from it. So we kind of, we get in these modes of like, it feels like we’re a ghost of sorts, you know, we don’t feel like we’re truly connected. And I think that connection is really important. So if you’re coming forward with AI, make sure you know how it works, at least from a user standpoint, that you can know how how it will impact the jobs you will have for the first year, for the next five years. And, you know, we’re learning. This is like the PC of the late 80s when it was changing every two months. It was obsoleting all our laptops.
14:33 – Unidentified Speaker
You know, we’re in that kind of crazy change mode that we’re in right now. So know it, know the technology, know how it applies to your business.
14:40 – Andy Sitison
Be that new voice in that company, because most companies don’t know how to take this on. Guys like me have been around forever. Don’t know new technology usually. I happen to, but not everybody. And so having those new entrants coming in, they not only bring in an understanding of that generation of people and how the world works with younger people, but it also helps them understand how to apply these technologies in a way that they’re not going to figure out on their own. So you are still extremely valuable in all those ways. Humans still matter.
15:12 – David W. Schropfer
Any quick tips like you mentioned the idea that you would you would tell the college graduates, hey, understand AI. So if one of them were to say, well, what’s the best way to do that? How would you respond to that?
15:26 – Andy Sitison
Yeah, you know, I bet most of them already do, but I would say use it. Yeah.
15:31 – Unidentified Speaker
Yeah.
15:32 – David W. Schropfer
It’s it’s it’s a question they would wouldn’t wouldn’t have probably.
15:36 – Andy Sitison
But, you know, using AI is is and that’s part of It’s challenging right now. My wife’s a middle school math teacher. My son’s a PhD candidate for physics and teaches classes. And the use of AI is probably gone too far. And we’re also finding just ability to pass classes that maybe a decade ago, everybody could pass. So are we changing the way we train and we educate ourselves? Is there things we don’t need to know anymore? You know, when calculators came out, we didn’t need to know arithmetic as much. And now cursive is a question, do we need it? So are we changing what a human needs to know to participate, you know, be a productive member of society? And is that what the tests are telling us? Or are we not learning enough? Are we somehow failing this next generation? And that is a big question in the school systems right now. And I believe it’s probably a little bit of both. I think we’re in, little bit of the shifting gears and we hear the clunking of something’s changing.
16:42 – Andy Sitison#+#David W. Schropfer
I don’t think we’re going to work as hard as we used to. You know, people of the Victorian age wanted to get to 40 hour or 50 hour work weeks.
16:48 – Andy Sitison
Now people might work less than 40, maybe work 40 But, you know, going forward, I’m starting to see, you know, maybe it’s a four day work week. Maybe it’s maybe that next generation doesn’t need to work the hours to still be the human and a valuable human in in today’s industry, if you will.
17:09 – Unidentified Speaker
Interesting.
17:09 – David W. Schropfer
You know, you may be uniquely positioned, given your background and your business and share more stories and even the fact that your wife works in a middle school. If you were talking to school administrators, superintendents and college people who run the president of a university, for example, or something like that, and you were to advise the educators on how to teach AI or how to factor AI in to their curriculum, what would you advise them there?
17:46 – Andy Sitison
Yeah. And, you know, it’s interesting. I’ve talked to a bunch of groups and I’ll give you two. One is teachers and one would be biologists, let’s say, like marine biologists. And I’ve given them both one-on-one classes, like a little appreciation, like I turned a GP, a generative AI model into a pirate. And it only could do pirate conversations, right?
18:08 – David W. Schropfer
And the teachers got it immediately.
18:10 – Andy Sitison
They laughed and they were with me the whole time. I talked to the marine biologists and they were all lost. And I was like, I need an extra hour to catch them to where I started. And I tell you that because they’re very smart people. They just haven’t had it introed in their lives yet. Teachers have had to deal with it for a few years now. And then it also was very helpful You know, at the end of the day, after teaching, it’s nice to have something to help you write a letter to the parent that’s a little mad. It’s very difficult to emotionally be that person all day long. And so it’s about awareness and aptitude and experience level. But and so I think when you look at bringing it into the environment, I think it’s a lot about walling off. And, you know, a lot of schools are starting to look at, you know, removing phones from access. And I would tell you, I think I think phones are way more damaging than AI is to our kids’ education and how they’re becoming adults.
19:07 – David W. Schropfer
There’s other things that are impacting these people that it’s not just AI.
19:10 – Andy Sitison
But I think it’s about walling off space and saying, you’re learning right now. In this case, you get popsicle sticks and some masking tape, and that’s all you got, right? In this case, you can use your phone. In this case, you can use AI. But I think we need to teach. And just like the old days, it’s just we have a new thing called AI. It’s got to be turned off and on. It can’t just be the cheat. And we deal with fraud in our world. And it’s easy to fake things when your stories, for example, if you have a little incentive there, people will show up for almost anything and try to feed you 20 stories that aren’t real. Build skill sets around what is fraud? How do we detect it? And it isn’t just going, hey, AI, tell me if that’s a fake story or not. Because I can look at two stories and that’s not what’s going to tell me what’s fake. The provenance that goes before that. It’s the IP addresses, the void they use, we have to look at all sorts of components. So I’m giving you too much, right? But if you’re a teacher, you have to start to think about the fencing. It’s almost like you’re a sheep herder, right? Like you have to think about the way you set up your farm.
20:30 – David W. Schropfer
It’s a good analogy.
20:32 – Andy Sitison
Yeah, and think about how you’re shepherding because it’s, you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna make it go away, but you can’t control moments. And I think that’s it. And I gotta say the big thing for me in teaching right now, we need to teach passion for learning and stop all the testing crazy that we have. Cause there’s, you know, there’s so much forced on the testing. So, so many kids are already burned out by the time they get to middle school. They’re not being taught to love it or learn, love learning. They’re being taught to pass something. All those things are, you know, should be able to chop on the chalkboard for analysis.
21:08 – Unidentified Speaker
Gotcha.
21:09 – David W. Schropfer
Andy, great conversation. Thanks so much for being on the podcast. Where can people find out more about what you do? Yeah.
21:17 – Andy Sitison
So, you know, we like I said, we collect stories of populations and, you know, study, study those stories and try to help brands and organizations better understand the humans that we all are. And that company is called Share More Stories. It’s pretty easy to find its own link in or out on our website. And if you type ShareMoreStories.com, you’re going to find us. My last name is Citizen, and you’re not going to find anybody but my family with that last name. So if you’re looking for me, you know, type Citizen in a Google and you’re going to you’re going to trip over me pretty quickly. So there’s all in all your formats of media. I’m in one or more of those. So feel free to pick the one you want to track me down in. And it’s been a blast. I appreciate the time and the opportunity to share with everybody. What’s going through my mind.
22:02 – David W. Schropfer
Wonderful. Yeah, no, really interesting insights and a great perspective. I don’t think we’ve had anybody like you on the podcast before with your experience, seriously, and it’s really helpful to get a full 360 view. So thanks again for being here and we’ll have you back someday.
22:17 – Andy Sitison
Yeah, it’d be great.
DIY CyberGuy with David W. Schropfer 
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