The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Is AI Killing Entry-Level Jobs? And Why Senior Care Is Booming

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

Scott Galloway breaks down whether AI is really impacting entry-level hiring, explains why he’s bullish on the senior care space, and offers advice for navigating career anxiety. Want to be featu...red in a future episode? Send a voice recording to officehours@profgmedia.com, or drop your question in the r/ScottGalloway subreddit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Support for the show comes from VCX, the public ticker for private tech. The U.S. stock market started history's greatest wave of wealth creation. From factory workers in Detroit to farmers in Omaha, anyone could own a piece of the great American companies. But today, our most innovative companies are staying private longer, which means everyday Americans are missing out. Until now. Introducing VCX, a public ticker for private tech. Visit getvcx.com for more info. That's getvcx.com.
Starting point is 00:00:28 carefully consider the investment materials before investing, including objectives, risk, charges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the funds perspective at getvcx.com. This is a paid sponsorship. Support for the show comes from backmarket. Most ads tell you that you have to upgrade to the latest tech product. But just because something is new doesn't mean you need it. Most recent thing I bought I didn't need? A climbing wall.
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Starting point is 00:01:34 Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is. With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. Welcome to Office Hours of Prop G. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to Office Hours of Proptoeemedia.com. Again, that's Office Hours of Proptoemedia.com. Or post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in our next episode. First question. Our first question comes from Jonah Klein on LinkedIn.
Starting point is 00:02:25 Jonah says, it seems clear to me that a big part of the reason for the dearth of entry and junior-level positions has to do with AI taking over much of the corporate grunt work that used to comprise much of what entry-level roles did. At some point, corporations are going to have to figure out who will be their future leaders if they aren't hiring entry-level talent. What do you make of this? And what do you think entry-level roles will look like for recent college grads in an AI-driven corporate environment? So new graduates now account for just 7% of new hires of Big Tech. That's down from 25% in 20-203 and over 50% pre-pendemic, according to Forbes. So Big Tech has dramatically reduced new hires. Early evidence suggests hiring for junior workers is already declining in AI-exposed fields.
Starting point is 00:03:07 A Stanford study found entry-level employment in AI-exposed occupations fell about 13% relative to less exposed jobs since generative AI adoption started to take off. The decline is concentrated among workers age 22 to 25, while employment for more experienced workers in the same occupation remained stable or grew. The problem, as you referenced, AI is most capable of automating the tasks traditionally assigned to junior employees. some research here on large corporations models suggest around 80% of the workforce could have at least 10% of tasks affected by AI with knowledge work tasks, including writing, coding, and analysis especially exposed. However, you know, really the labor, the labor market does not just reflect the, you know, job apocalypse that it was supposedly, we're worried was going to happen. And there just hasn't, it's not easy to really find large-scale job licenses from AI. What I think you see is AI paralysis, kind of no hire, no fire. What's interesting, the most interesting thing about the labor market right now is one of the,
Starting point is 00:04:10 I forget what the term is, but people looking for another job is at an all-time low. People are thinking, oh, maybe I'll just stick here. Employment remains relatively resilient, suggesting AI is currently changing how work is done more than the total number of jobs, though hiring appears to be slowing. So people are asking you to be more productive with AI. and saying we're not going to hire as many people next year, but they're not laying off people yet. Research success, the first ring of the corporate ladder may shift. I should actually, I should condition that.
Starting point is 00:04:37 There is some layoffs. There are some layoffs in big tech. They're the early adopters of AI. I think a lot of that is overhiring from the pandemic. But when you lay off people, there's sort of a false flag going on around layoffs right now. If you lay off people, it's not because our business is slowed down or I'm a fucking idiot and overhired during pandemic. It's, oh, AI, right? we're leveraging new technology because I'm so smart and my stock will go up if I say we're going to be
Starting point is 00:05:01 more productive because I can reduce 10% of the workforce and not lose any productivity because I know how to master AI as opposed to saying we overhired or you know our business is not we're projecting business not going to be that strong so a lot of people are blaming AI and it may not actually be accurate so employment remains relatively resilient suggesting AI currently changing how work is done more than the total number of jobs as we said although again hiring does appear to be slowing research executives the first run of the corporate ladder may shift toward AI supervised analyst, juniors validating and interpreting AI outputs, higher skill starting roles, fewer hires, fewer hires, and more technical expectations, and skill-based hiring,
Starting point is 00:05:39 greater emphasis on practical AI literacy rather than just degrees. So it's all kind of leads to what you should do. First and foremost, buck up. When I graduated from business school in 2002, 1992, 1992, do, 40% of us had jobs on graduation day, which meant the majority, we're at commencement with our parents, you know, wearing the cap and gown, and the majority of us didn't have jobs. So this, and quite frankly frankly, the younger generation is just used to people three or four years ahead of them having three or four offers at JPMorgan and Google. Yeah, it's gotten a little bit
Starting point is 00:06:17 tougher, but it's still not bad. Youth unemployment is about 10%, which is kind of historically an average if you will, to be AI enabled. Any interview, you should be able to answer, essentially, three questions, now a fourth. What's different about you? How does it apply that differentiation to being able to be good here? And how do you work on that differentiation? And then the fourth thing you need to ask is, how do you think AI is going to impact this job? And specifically, you have to demonstrate AI literacy as it relates to that job. If you want to be in brand management at Estee Lauder, you've got to be able to communicate. This is how I've been using different LLMs to think about product launches or new product
Starting point is 00:07:01 development or how we make your media budget and SDALatter more impactful. No one says that we're not going to hire that person. They seem to understand a lot about AI. No one ever says that. So you need to add that to your toolkit, if you will. Interview as many places as possible. Don't let perfect be the enemy a good. And recognize no one's coming to save you.
Starting point is 00:07:19 You have to get a job. I mean, and what I will say, that the economy is now where it has been for 99% of the world, for 99% of history, and that is you have to go get a job. No one's coming for you. And also just recognize you can absolutely add value to a company and you're confident, but ask yourself before you're going in the interview, what's different about me? Why does that differentiation matter at a company like this? What do I do to work on and establish and maintain that differentiation and also find a way to incorporate into your rap, how your AI literacy and AI domain expertise will impact your ability to add value at that organization. Thanks to the question. Question number two comes from N. Williams 7-32 on Reddit, they say, Hey, Prop G, I'm curious if you're looking at the senior healthcare space from an investment perspective. The way I see it, we have a growing demographic of people over 65 with the majority of wealth in the U.S. and rising life expectancies.
Starting point is 00:08:16 We'd love to hear thoughts on the validity of this thesis, potential impact on the society and if you think the space is positioned well for investment. Oh yeah, disco. I read a thing on which companies are like have the highest failure and highest success rate. Like clubs and restaurants have you know like a 10% success rate. And the number one most successful business were like 94% with senior care. And this goes to one of my big themes that I tell my kids. You have ROI on the y-axis, you have sex appeal out, sexy businesses on the X-axis. The line goes firmly and squarely down to the right as you go along the X-axis. Sexier the business, lower the return on your financial and human capital. You want to own a restaurant, a jewelry line, a club, going to sports,
Starting point is 00:09:05 entertainment, Hollywood, anything that sounds cool, you better mean the top 10, if not the top 1% right away, because there's an over-imbundance. There's an over-investment in human capital, meaning the returns are starched out. You want to start a SaaS company offering maintenance for health care workers that maintain X-ray machines. Disco. That business is going to short-grade ROI. The top half of tax lawyers make really good living. The top half of actors are unemployed.
Starting point is 00:09:37 The senior space is really unattractive. We don't like to be around seniors, right? They smell funny. Or you go into a place at seniors' home and you think, This isn't where I want to hang out. And guess what? It's actually a very rewarding job. So anyways, senior centers, senior care, fucking amazing business.
Starting point is 00:09:55 So the market, Peter Drucker, who's one of my role models from a professional standpoint, said every major shift in the economy or successful businesses are basically driven by demographics. So the U.S. population of people 65 plus reach 61.2 million in 2024. The census projects one in five Americans will be over 65 by 2030. The fastest growing and most care-intensive group is the 85-plus population. People are living really. I read that the fastest growing cohort in America are people over the age of 100 because they're never used to be any of them.
Starting point is 00:10:26 And now there's going to be a lot of them projected to grow from 6.5 million. This is people over 85 in 2022 to 13.7 million by 2040. So in just 18 years, the number of people over the age of 85 is going to double. and that's from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. So another six and a half million people, if you're over 85, you need care of some sort. Either a live-in or special services or someone dropping by or just specific niche services. So that industry is going to double over the next decade and a half. According to the Centers for Medicare or Medicaid Services, CMS, seniors account for a disproportionate share of health care spending.
Starting point is 00:11:08 The average annual health care spending for someone aged over 65 is about $22,000 per year. that's roughly two and a half times higher than working-age adults. I bet it's more than that. But think about it. This market, double the number of people, and they spent $22,000 a year on health care. Medicare spending continues to expand with the aging population. Medicare spending reached about $1.1 trillion in 2024 growing 7% to 8% year over year. The financing layer around senior health care is also expanding.
Starting point is 00:11:36 More seniors are getting their Medicare coverage through private insurance companies rather than the traditional government-run Medicare program. Medicare Advantage enrolled reached about 35 million people in 2026, meaning more than half of eligible seniors are now in Medicare Advantage plans. The labor market reflects this. So the Bureau of Labor and Statistics projects that home health and personal care jobs will grow 17% through 2034, one of the fastest growing occupations in the U.S. So the demographic shift here is real. America is aging rapidly.
Starting point is 00:12:10 and the most care-intensive population is 85 plus. So the addressable market is set to double. By the way, growth is everything. When I go, I was in Zermot, and it was fresh snow and went out, and I thought, oh, I'm a pretty good skier. And then the snow got shitty and froze. And then it reminded me, okay, no, I'm not. I'm a shitty skier. When you're in a growth market, it's fresh powder.
Starting point is 00:12:35 And you can just be very good without being very good. And that is, you'd rather be average in a growing market than great in a declining market. Because quite frankly, the wins are just in your sales. So a business servicing people over the age of 85, disco. And I'm talking John Travolta disco, not like Casey in the Sunshine Band. Actually, I love Casey in the Sunshine Band. Anyways, if you want to start a business servicing people over the age of 85, champagne and cocaine, my brother. And the champagne is none of your friends are going to want to do it because they don't want to be around old people.
Starting point is 00:13:10 So there's a lack of investment from human capital. You can raise money because private equity venture capital firms smell money around this population. And, God, I'd love to put together that deck. My adjustable market is about to double in the next 15 years. In sum, the big winners will likely be the companies that help the system care for older Americans, specifically 85 plus at lower cost and outside the hospital. outside the hospital where costs are huge and quite frankly the longer the more time you spend it and one says oh you know i'd be more comfortable in the hospital people don't want to be in the hospital
Starting point is 00:13:44 i do think that's going to be i think there's going to be i wrote a book called post corona one of my big things was dispersion dispersion of work to homes dispersion of education to computers also i think there's going to be a huge dispersion of health care i think the percentage of people who die at home if you will is going to explode um when my mom was sick i said okay it sounds like we got about six months here, what's on your bucket list? And she said, I have two things. I want to go see my family in England. Let me do that sooner rather than later, because I'm obviously not feeling very well. But she said more than anything, I just, I want to pass at home. And so this was nine, this was 2004. And quite frankly, it wasn't easy. I had resources and I'm creative. And I was
Starting point is 00:14:28 able to take time off of a lead from NYU. So I was able to orchestrate it. But it's not easy. a lot. That's another one, 85 plus and helping people stay at home as long as possible. I think it's going to be an enormous business. In some, it's a great fucking idea. It's a great idea. And lowest or highest success rate of any small business, senior care. We'll be right back after a quick break. Support for today's show comes from Framer. Let's say your marketing team wants a new landing page, so the design team mocks it up, and then your engineering department who's already got too much on their plate responds with, yeah, we'll get to it.
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Starting point is 00:16:26 But work today still depends on clear communication and when every message counts, sounding hurried or generic can mean getting missed. Grammarly gives you one place to think, write, and finish your work, and you can find it right where you are, write with access to agents that help you sound natural, clear, and engaging. Whether you're writing an email, proposal, or novel, Gramerly helps you go from draft to final draft to done in no time. You can use Gramerly's AI chat to come up with ideas, outline a solid draft, then refine it with context or suggestions that fit what you're working on. You can see why 90% of professionals that say Gramerly has saved them time writing and editing their work. That's because Gramerly is designed to simplify complex ideas with clarity that sounds like you, not AI.
Starting point is 00:17:08 In a world of generic AI, you don't have to sound like everyone else. With Grammarly, you never will. Download Grammarly for free at Grammarly.com. That's Grammarly.com. Support for this show comes from VCX, the public ticker for private tech. For generations, American companies have moved the world forward to their ingenuity and determination. And for generations, everyday Americans could be part of that journey through perhaps the greatest innovation of all, the U.S. stock market. It didn't matter whether you were a factory worker in Detroit,
Starting point is 00:17:40 or a farmer in Omaha. Anyone could own a piece of the great American companies. But now, that's changed. Today, our most innovative companies are staying private rather than going public. The result is that everyday Americans are excluded from investing and getting left further behind, while a select few reap all the benefits. Until now. Introducing VCX, the public ticker for private tech.
Starting point is 00:18:00 VCX by Fundrise gives everyone the opportunity to invest in the next generation of innovation, including the company's leading the AI revolution, space exploration, defense tech, and more. Visit getvcx.com for more info. That's getvcx.com. Carefully consider the investment material for investing, including objectives, discharges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at getvcx.com. This is a paid sponsorship. Welcome back, question number three. Hi, Scott. New listener here as a result of your most recent appearance on modern wisdom, and I'm a big fan of what I've heard so far. Congratulations on your success and keep up the good work. I recently left my consulting career at the beginning of this year to join
Starting point is 00:18:50 my dad and uncle as a financial advisor on their team, but after about a year in the role, I'm second-guessing my decisions and career choices in general. I realize I'm coming into a great situation joining my family's advisory team. However, I can't stop thinking about the long-term viability of being a financial advisor, given the development of AI and how I think it will soon be able to perform the role of an advisor just as well as a human can if it's not able to already. Additionally, I don't find the work engaging and am not a fan of working with clients. I'm 30 years old and not afraid to make career changes and start over, but do you have any advice for someone that feels like they're not accomplishing their potential in terms of work and has concerns for the longevity of the career
Starting point is 00:19:38 they're currently in? Thanks. Thanks for a question. It sounds like you're not happy. And And when you're young, your benchmark is college and the kind of fantasy that work is amazing and fun that is, or the myth that is told to you by people, your university and people. And so work is work is what I would say is you need to give work at least one or two years to see if it gets better. But if you really just are dreading work and you're there because you want to impress or you felt some pressure from your family, just have an open and honest conversation with your dad. and your uncle and people you trust saying, I don't know if I'm like this, which makes me believe I'm not going to be very good at it, and I'm wondering if I should consider something else.
Starting point is 00:20:23 And also, is there a different role within the company? In terms of, I think you're trying to backfill, it sounds to me if I listen to your voice, you sound a bit down, and you're trying to backfill, and I might be wrong here, but my sense is you're trying to backfill reasons for why you should leave.
Starting point is 00:20:42 and AI is not one of them because financial advisors to a certain extent our tax code keeps getting more and more complicated. I'm spending more and more money on financial advice. Now, do I use my financial advisors at Goldman to come up with my stock picks and balance my portfolio? No, but I use them for tax planning, which has gotten incredibly, incredibly complicated. I use my folks in Northern Trust to find me mortgages, liquidity. I mean, the financial advisory services or wealth management at Goldman and JPMorgan are growing. And I think that my guess is the industry is growing because it keeps getting more complicated. Now, AI will be able to say, okay, here's how you balance a portfolio. But financial services is oftentimes basically almost like
Starting point is 00:21:28 senior care in terms of finances. And those people don't want to, they want you to understand AI. And they want you to give them a sense of security. And they want you to figure out the estate. Yeah, most of the stuff you can probably answer with AI, but they want some. to tell them and they want someone to make recommendations. And so I don't, you know, the number of accountants, accounting is being destroyed by AI, but accountants are actually growing a number because they're moving upstream into wealth planning and tax strategies and inheritance. Inheritant. And a lot of people, I speak or you speak every year, the UBS young leaders thing, which is basically rich kids. You know, everyone, it's all these famous names. It's like, oh, your father started in Bloomberg,
Starting point is 00:22:08 and now you're a billionaire, and they bring them in for two days to talk about philanthropy and being responsible citizen and how you manage money. There's going to be a lot of succession planning, and quite frankly, people don't know how to do. I have no, I am still confused around the relationship between my money and my kids and their happiness. Do I give them money? If so, how much and when? And how do I do it tax efficiently? And who do I need as a trustee? And what are the tax implications? and, you know, these are big issues that AI can kind of give you some ideas on, but people are still going to want to meet with someone. So anyways, bottom line is, I don't buy AI is going to destroy the industry so you should get out?
Starting point is 00:22:46 You've got to ask yourself, is this something I could be great at? Because once you're great at something, then you start to like it. And what might be happening at your family's company is it is the low man on the toting pole, you're charged a new business, which means basically calling people and asking you for meetings and asking them for their money, which sucks. And it's hard, especially it sounds like you might not be an extrovert, but an introvert. So here's what you need to do. Ask yourself, is this just not the industry for me? Or is it that work is hard, especially in financial services, where the first 10 years, it's the worst job in the world. And then it slowly but surely becomes the best job in the
Starting point is 00:23:19 world as you build a book of business. How much are the relationships impacting your view of work? Do you have a strained relationship with your father and your uncle where you're just better being seeing them on weekends and not working with them. The dynamics of working in a family business are really thick, right? Ask them for their help. What do they think, you know, or maybe not have that kind of relationship, but get some outside advice and think to yourself, is there a different role within the company? Do I need them to change their behavior such that I'm happier?
Starting point is 00:23:49 Is there, you know, or is it just not for you? And if it's just not for you, be very transparent with them and help them brainstorm with you about another career. But don't be too hard on yourself. You know, this happens a lot. So what are we going to do? We're going to have an honest conversation with the man in the mirror around, is this just hard work and I need to give it longer? Am I cut out for this? Are other things impacting my day-to-day job, a strained relationship with my uncle and my father? And can I, can I fix that? Open and honest conversations with some mentors, including maybe your father and your uncle. And then forgive yourself in a recognition that if it doesn't work out, it's not the end of
Starting point is 00:24:29 the world and ask for their help finding another gig. Thanks for the question. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to office hours of proptuemedia.com. That's office hours of prop2media.com. Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode. What a thrill! This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Jenaire. Camryka is our social producer, Brad Williams, is our editor, and Drew Burroughs is our technical director.
Starting point is 00:25:01 Thank you for listening to the PropgeyPod from ProVG Media.

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