AI isn't causing mass layoffs, but it's quietly shutting young graduates out of the job market while making senior workers more productive than ever — bad news for new grads, good news for companies and experienced staff.

• MIT researchers built an "Iceberg Index" mapping AI's ability to do human job tasks, and found it's especially good at replacing entry-level work like drafting documents or basic data tasks.
• Senior employees aren't being replaced — they're using AI to work faster and offload grunt work, while companies simply stop hiring and training juniors instead of firing veterans.
• MIT's analysis found nearly 12% of the US workforce could already be replaced by AI, a wage bill bigger than the GDP of countries like Poland or Switzerland.
• Companies that adopt AI are actually growing faster and hiring more senior staff, but that growth isn't reaching graduates, who are getting rejected by hiring algorithms before a human even sees their resume.
• Students are already reacting: computer science enrollment at MIT itself has dropped sharply as young people lose confidence that a degree still guarantees a career.

Outlook: The damage will show up later as a shortage of experienced mid-level managers, since companies are cutting off the pipeline that used to turn graduates into tomorrow's leaders.