The one story you should read today, selected by the editors of New York.
November 12, 2025
Although I’ve read a lot about the so-called Gen-Z job apocalypse, it has always felt like something to worry about later. AI can’t do everything; most young people I know have jobs. But as James Walsh reports in this alarming feature — a sort of follow-up to his also alarming story about cheating on college campuses — it is here now. James talked to dozens of young people unable to get jobs across all sorts of industries as well as to the bosses who are deciding it’s not worth the trouble or money to hire them. Young people will have to be smarter and cheaper. And (if they’re able to keep their jobs) they’ll have to upskill — a buzzword that no one seemed to know the exact meaning of. “This is not replacing a person,” one company’s director of automation told James. “This is allowing people to have time to do higher-value activities that not only serve the company better, but are more fulfilling.” But how many of these ambitious employees do we expect employers to retain? And if AI is only getting better and better, what’s the point of upskilling at all?
—Katy Schneider, features editor, New York
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