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White-collar workers have been at the center of much of the public handwringing over AI. Entry-level jobs in finance and software engineering seem to be on the chopping block<\/a>. More college graduates are struggling to find work<\/a> in a challenging job market, and unemployment ticked up to 5.6% by the end of 2025. Tech companies and other major employers have repeatedly cited AI adoption to justify layoffs.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There are, of course, plenty of factors driving these changes beyond AI, including a hiring slowdown. But there\u2019s no denying AI will reshape the labor market over time\u2014and not just for college-educated workers. A new report from the Brookings Institution<\/a> in partnership with the nonprofit Opportunity@Work reveals how AI will also impact workers without college degrees, by interrupting the career pathways they have long relied upon to land higher-paying jobs.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a ton of coverage on the challenges of AI for college-educated workers and specifically college graduates,\u201d says Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Metro program and co-author of the report. \u201cWe think there\u2019s a huge gap. We need to talk about non-four-year degree holders, who are obviously at the heart of social mobility . . . and the status of the pathways and sequences of jobs that they depend on.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just individual jobs that are at risk as AI spreads through the workforce. The technology is poised to reconfigure entire career pathways for all kinds of workers, particularly those who lack a college degree. Over 70 million people in the U.S. find their way into the workforce through other means, defined by Opportunity@Work as \u201cskilled through alternative routes\u201d (STARs). Opportunity@Work found that these workers often rely on what are described as \u201cGateway\u201d jobs, which help them develop important skills and act as a critical bridge between \u201cOrigin\u201d jobs\u2014entry-level roles that allow them to get a foothold in the workforce\u2014and more lucrative \u201cDestination\u201d jobs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Among workers without college degrees, over 15 million are currently in jobs that are highly exposed to AI, according to the Brookings report. Of those workers, about 11 million hold Gateway jobs\u2014and STARs also account for over 62% of people in Gateway jobs across the workforce, making them a crucial element of the broader employment pipeline. The majority of Gateway jobs that are likely to be disrupted are in clerical or administrative work, which also tends to be dominated by women, as previous research<\/a> has highlighted. Nearly 13 million Destination jobs also have high exposure to AI, among them sales representatives and accountants.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf these Gateway occupations play a critical role in a number of pathways, lots of pathways run through them, and they\u2019re now at risk,\u201d says Justin Heck, the senior director of research and data production at Opportunity@Work. \u201cWhat does that mean for the lower wage workers for whom that would be the next step? And then what does that mean for all of the employers who are trying to hire for these Destination occupations who now don\u2019t have that experience pipeline that they\u2019ve relied on historically?\u201d<\/p>\n Overall, just about half of the pathways between Gateway and Destination jobs are highly exposed\u2014which means they are very likely to be automated or augmented in some way by AI, potentially compromising key pathways for many workers without a college degree. \u201cWhen I think of customer service representatives, secretaries, and accounting clerks\u2014these are often like entry points into white-collar work [and] office settings that then create the avenues for folks to move into different roles,\u201d Heck says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n