If you’re just starting your career, your boss may expect you to see them in the office more often than your colleagues.
British fintech company Revolut recently announced that from 2027, participants in its intern and graduate programs will be required to work in an office at least three days a week. The company will continue to allow other employees to choose between working remotely or in-person.
Revolut says the changes reflect the value of IRL learning for early-career workers.
“You’re not just learning from a manager telling you what to do; you’re actually observing how other people do their jobs,” said Queenie Lee, head of talent programs at the company.
Researchers broadly agree that early-career employees benefit from in-person mentoring and informal learning.
But as companies like Revolut distinguish between young and experienced workers, labor market observers remain divided over what relative role remote work, AI, and other factors may play in employers’ willingness to hire entry-level employees in the first place.
This is important because for decades, college graduates in their early to mid-20s typically had lower unemployment rates than the overall workforce. That’s no longer the case. Since late 2018, these workers have often faced higher unemployment rates than the workforce overall, according to the New York Fed.
Effects of remote work
Peter John-Lambert, a postdoctoral researcher at the London School of Economics and the University of Warwick, and colleagues recently concluded that the decline in entry-level employment is better explained by remote working than by AI.
Lambert and Yannick Schindler of the UK’s Ellison Institute of Technology examined employment and recruitment data in several countries, including the United States, before and after the introduction of ChatGPT and the shift to remote work due to the pandemic. Their research found that while entry-level hires have fallen by 29% in recent years, senior hires have increased by more than 5%.
One reason it’s easy to confuse the impact of AI with the impact of remote work is because both are associated with desk jobs that can be done from a distance, Lambert said.
Lambert said the decline in the share of entry-level employees was likely due to remote work, and that the economic slowdown started before the advent of GenAI tools, and there were still limits to how much technology could meaningfully impact hiring decisions.
“It’s only when you compare these things holistically that you see a stronger relationship for working from home than for generative AI,” Lambert said.
Researchers at the New York Fed reached similar conclusions about the effects of remote work. This structure makes it difficult for managers to train and mentor new employees, the researchers said. They studied privately held Fortune 500 companies and found that “feedback declines dramatically” when colleagues leave.
“The loss of feedback is more pronounced for younger employees, who miss out on constructive comments that foster growth,” they write.
Not everyone who studies remote work considers it to be such a succinct description. Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University, said remote work, artificial intelligence, pandemic-era learning loss and a broader hiring slowdown that has been especially tough on tech jobs are all plausible explanations for the weak job market for college graduates. However, Bloom said the current data does not allow us to determine which factors are driving the trend, or to what extent.
Effect of AI
Mark Marr, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Business, found in a recent study that companies implementing AI in job titles and job descriptions reduced their overall hiring numbers, with early-career positions seeing the biggest declines.
Ma said this suggests that fewer entry-level employees are needed as companies increase spending on AI or hire workers with AI skills.
“They’re trying to eliminate these junior positions because junior-level jobs are easily replaced by AI,” he said.
Marr said new graduates would have had a tougher time then than they do now, as remote work rates were higher a few years ago than they are now. But “the problem is now even worse,” he says.
At the same time, companies that advertised more remote jobs were hiring more junior positions overall, rather than fewer, Ma said.
“These companies are actually growing rapidly, so they need to hire more people,” he said.
make learning happen
For those who actually enter the workforce, many welcome at least some face-to-face work. According to a 2025 Gallup poll, only about a quarter of Gen Z workers who can work remotely want to work full time, compared to about a third of older generations.
Brad Hirshbein, senior economist at think tank W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, said a hybrid arrangement in which workers spend at least part of their time in the office could be a “happy medium” and an effective way to ensure younger workers get the guidance they need and often desire.
Remote workers, especially those early in their careers, can’t necessarily learn everything that makes them more productive unless they’re in the office and witness it, he said.
“Sometimes you end up being unhappy simply because you haven’t learned something,” Hirshbein says.
Enabling learning is part of the thinking behind Revolut’s internal requirements for interns and some early-career talent, Lee said. The company plans to have about 500 interns and graduate program participants in 2027, up from about 300 this year, she said.