The ‘Missing Rung’: Why Cutting Entry-Level Hiring Now Threatens Your 2035 Leadership Bench

Most workforce plans are written for the next four quarters. The problem described in a new analysis covered by HR Dive on November 10, 2026, plays out over ten years. Guy Berger, workforce economist in residence at Guild, argues that today’s slow hiring market, especially for entry-level roles that are often filled by young people, could create a “missing rung” in the leadership pipeline that throttles company growth in the future.

The argument matters because it challenges a calculation many employers have already made. Faced with an uncertain economy, and with more routine tasks now automated or handled by AI, companies have concluded that they can get away with hiring less junior talent for now. Berger’s point is that “for now” has a habit of becoming permanent, and that the bill arrives years later, when it is too late to fix cheaply.

The core argument

Berger’s analysis comes down to three connected claims.

The risk is a hardened freeze. The danger, in his words, “is in what happens if this hiring freeze hardens into an impermeable barrier for people at the bottom rung of the career ladder.” He adds: “Do that for a few years and you won’t have anyone to promote into the middle a decade from now.”

The result is a donut hole. A company or sector that stops hiring at the bottom ends up with plenty of older and younger workers but too few people in the middle, the layer that supplies middle managers and technical leads. That is the layer that does most to shape everyday employee experience and culture.

Poaching will not fill the hole. “It’s tempting to think you can fix a donut hole later by poaching,” Berger said. “But almost everybody in your industry is doing the same thing. If your plan is to hire experienced people from competitors five or ten years down the line, remember that they didn’t hire those people either.”

Why this is happening now

The wider labor data supports the picture of a cautious hiring market. Kurums has tracked it in recent weeks: the U.S. added 165,000 jobs in October in what has been described as a “low-hire, low-fire” market, and a new LHH study found that 66% of U.S. HR leaders expect layoffs in the next 12 months. When employers expect cuts, the first lever they pull is usually the cheapest to pull: they stop opening junior requisitions.

Seasonal hiring tells a similar story. HR Dive reported the same week that holiday hiring looks different in 2026, with retailers pulling back on large hiring announcements and creating more part-time roles, which may mark a tipping point for seasonal staffing. Seasonal and part-time work has long been one of the main entry points into the labor market for young people.

AI is the other half of the explanation. Many of the tasks that once filled a junior analyst’s or coordinator’s week, such as data entry, first-draft reports, basic research and routine customer queries, can now be done or accelerated by software. That makes it easier to justify fewer junior hires. It also changes what remaining entry-level roles look like.

What the search data shows about job seekers

Google Trends data for the past three months shows how persistent demand for entry-level work is. U.S. search interest in “entry level jobs” peaked on August 19, 2026, at the end of the summer graduation and internship season, and has stayed high since. Over the last two weeks it has averaged about half of that peak, roughly level with the previous fortnight.

The related searches are telling. The top queries include “jobs near me entry level”, “remote jobs entry level”, “it entry level jobs”, “entry level data entry jobs” and “entry level analyst jobs”. Several of those are exactly the kinds of roles most exposed to automation. Among the fastest-rising related queries are “offshore oil rig jobs entry level” and “offshore entry level jobs”, hands-on roles where automation is harder. Job seekers appear to be looking for doors that are still open.

Interest in the idea of a “career ladder” itself has also jumped. Searches for the term over the past two weeks were more than double the level of the previous two weeks, with “what is a career ladder” the top related query. That is not proof of anything, but it is consistent with a workforce asking whether the traditional path upward still exists.

Entry-level work has already changed

One of the most useful points in the HR Dive piece is that entry-level jobs no longer look as they once did. They now emphasize judgment calls over the basic, high-volume work that allowed young workers to learn as they went. That creates a paradox. Good judgment is developed over time, through repetition and feedback. If the repetitive work that built judgment has been automated, junior employees are being asked to exercise a skill they have had little chance to build.

This is why simply “hiring more juniors” is not a complete answer. Employers also need to rebuild the learning that used to happen by default.

A practical playbook for HR leaders

1. Set a floor for early-career hiring

Treat entry-level hiring as a pipeline investment, not a discretionary cost. Agree with finance on a minimum number of early-career hires per year, tied to your projected need for middle managers and technical leads five to ten years out. Model attrition honestly: not every junior hire will stay, so the floor needs to be higher than the number of future leaders you want.

2. Do the demographic math

Run a simple age-and-tenure analysis of your workforce by function. Where are you thin in the 3–8 years of experience band? Which functions have senior people approaching retirement? Fortune reported this week that in New York residents over 65 are staying in jobs longer. That can delay a succession problem, but it can also mask it. Present the analysis to leadership as a risk register item, with dates.

3. Redesign entry-level roles for learning

If AI now handles the volume work, design junior roles around supervised judgment: reviewing AI output, handling exceptions, owning small decisions with a clear escalation path. Build in structured feedback loops so that each decision becomes a learning opportunity. The goal is to compress the experience that used to take years of repetitive tasks into a deliberate program.

4. Use cohorts and clear career paths

Sources cited by HR Dive recommend building clear career paths and leaning into new-hire cohorts to emphasize learning and bonding. Cohorts make training more efficient, create peer support and give leaders a visible pool of talent to develop. A published career path, showing what it takes to move from entry level to team lead, also helps with retention, because people stay where they can see a future.

5. Protect managers from overload

The obvious way to develop junior staff is to hand the job to their managers. But surveys show managers are already facing a burnout crisis. A separate HR Dive report the same week found that AI leadership training tools are most effective when paired with managerial support, which underlines the point: tools do not replace people, and the people are stretched. Give managers time, recognition and targets for developing staff, and use learning teams, mentors and apprenticeships to share the load. A new Department of Labor final rule revamping anti-discrimination requirements for apprenticeships is a reason to check that any program you build is compliant.

6. Build internal mobility before external poaching

Berger’s warning about poaching is a strong argument for internal mobility. Create routes for people already in your business, including frontline and operational staff, to move into professional and technical roles through training and sponsorship. These employees already know your business and culture, and they are often overlooked.

What this means for job seekers and early-career employees

For people trying to get a first job, the analysis is sobering but also useful. Entry-level roles that remain will reward judgment, communication and the ability to work with AI tools rather than compete with them. Show evidence of decisions you have made and problems you have solved, not just tasks you have completed. Look for employers that run graduate cohorts, apprenticeships or structured rotation programs, because they are signaling a long-term commitment to development. Our guides to the rising professions of 2026 and the skills behind them are a good place to start.

Caveats

The “missing rung” is a forecast based on economic reasoning, not a measured outcome. Some companies will find ways to develop talent faster through technology; others may discover they need fewer middle managers than they do today, especially if organizations become flatter. The Google Trends data reflects U.S. search behavior and shows relative interest, not absolute volumes. And conditions differ sharply by industry and country. Still, the core logic is hard to argue with: people cannot be promoted from a rung that was never filled.

Bottom line

Cutting entry-level hiring looks cheap this year and can look expensive in ten. Guy Berger’s warning gives HR leaders a clear way to frame the risk to the C-suite: the leadership bench of 2035 is being decided by hiring choices in 2026. Set a floor for early-career hiring, redesign junior roles so they still build judgment, support managers instead of overloading them, and invest in internal mobility. The companies that keep the bottom rung in place will be the ones with leaders to promote when growth returns.

Sources: HR Dive, “Lack of hiring now will create a ‘missing rung’ that may topple growth” (Nov. 10, 2026), reporting on analysis by Guild’s Guy Berger; HR Dive, “Holiday hiring looks different this year” and “AI leadership training tools are most effective when paired with managerial support” (Nov. 10, 2026); Fortune via HR Dive; Google Trends, U.S., Aug. 11–Nov. 11, 2026.