Dear Congresswoman Fletcher,

Thank you for all the work you've done to our community over the years! I'm writing to you about a suggestion on reducing the damage of AI to the job market for new college graduates. As we all know, with the boom of AI, many companies have laid off a large number of employees, and completely stopped entry-level hiring. While some experienced employees still have a chance to be re-employed, new college graduates are in a particularly difficult situation, as they can't break the chicken-and-egg circle of no experience-no job-no experience.

Against this backdrop, it's very pleasing to see IBM's decision to expand entry-level hiring (see e.g. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ibm-expands-entry-level-hiring-165921396.html). As they say, "[w]ithout enough early-career hires, companies may struggle to develop future mid-level managers. That often forces firms to hire from competitors, which tends to be more expensive." We may interpret their action as a pure business decision, driven by the invisible hand of capitalism. But their action is unexpectedly benevolent and will be tremendously beneficial to the whole society, especially if their exemplary action is copied by other companies and organizations. Unfortunately, few companies will do so, and in a decade from now we may well end up with a massive work environment where experienced employees are old and retiring while mid- and entry-level employees are virtually non-existing, not to mention the detrimental effect of high unemployment rate, low contribution of personal income taxes, and high claims of unemployment benefits.

What's the solution? Training of the unemployed, experienced or not, is not realistic, because such training is rarely considered work experience, at least for the college graduates. I'm proposing a new solution: reward the companies that hire entry-level workers. When no company is willing to contribute to the public good, the government should step in. That's how construction of public highways or public libraries is funded. This would not be needed if there were hundreds of IBMs hiring new graduates, or hundreds of Andrew Carnegies funding construction of public libraries. Until that happens, our government should take over this economically dubious but socially beneficial task. Not by training people, but by financially encouraging the employers that hire people who are deprived of work experience at this unprecedented age of AI.

Sincerely,

February 2026

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