In 1971, Boeing laid off 44,000 engineers in 18 months. The aerospace industry is still paying for it — they're projecting a shortage of over a million engineers by 2030, and the cohort that would now be the senior bench was simply never hired.
Last year, S&P 500 companies cut 400,000 jobs — the first net decline since 2016 — and the specific pattern of who's being cut, and why, looks uncomfortably familiar. At firms that adopted AI, junior employment fell 7 to 10% within six quarters. Senior employment kept rising. The pipeline isn't slowing. It's stopping.
In this episode of In The Loop, I'm working through the data on junior employment at AI-adopting firms, the economic logic that makes cutting entry-level roles feel rational, and why I think that logic is setting up a shortage that will look obvious in hindsight.
I also take on Tim O'Reilly's counter-argument — his historical case that every programming wave expanded demand rather than destroyed it — and explain why I think he's right about 2035 and wrong about the cohort that's supposed to get there.
⏭️ Episode highlights
(01:15) – The Boeing billboard and what it cost
(03:00) – 400,000 jobs: where the cuts are concentrated
(05:00) – Why junior work is separable — and senior work isn't(07:00) – The radiology lesson: why strong bundles hold
(08:45) – O'Reilly's wave argument and the Jevons paradox
(11:30) – Where the optimistic case runs out of road
(13:00) – The 43-point gap: atrophy you can't feel
(14:45) – IBM, Publicis, and who's betting on the pipeline
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Jack Houghton
Mindset AI
