Artificial intelligence has not been around long enough to reward seniority the way most fields do, and that gap is starting to show up in who gets hired.
Generation Z accounted for 69% of new hires for two of the highest-paying individual contributor roles in AI in 2025, forward-deployed engineers and AI engineers, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday (Aug. 18). The median annual salary is $199,000 for a forward-deployed engineer and $166,000 for an AI engineer, according to LinkedIn research published in August.
Millennials, by contrast, dominated the layer just above that, claiming 60% of new “head of AI” roles in 2025, the WSJ reported, a role that pays a median annual salary of $236,000, per the LinkedIn research.
“Companies are just gorging on AI talent,” said Kory Kantenga, LinkedIn’s head of economics for the Americas, CBS News reported April 16.
The split compresses a career timeline that has traditionally taken a decade or more. A company hiring for AI engineering roles is not primarily rewarding years of institutional tenure. It is rewarding hands-on technical fluency with a technology that barely existed five years ago, giving some young workers leverage against colleagues.
That leverage is already showing up in the hiring data. AI job postings on LinkedIn grew 156% between 2024 and 2025, following 14% growth the year before, CNBC reported Tuesday. The typical AI role now pays a median annual salary of $177,000, more than double the $80,000 median for non-AI roles.
Same AI Boom Is Cutting Off the Bottom Rung
The shift is arriving at the same time AI is eliminating much of the entry-level work young people have always used to build a career. Workers aged 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed occupations have seen a 19% relative decline in employment as of June, up from a 15% shortfall a year earlier, according to the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, which has tracked the gap widening steadily since it first identified the pattern in August 2025.
The decline is concentrated in occupations where companies use AI to automate tasks outright rather than assist a worker doing them, the Stanford study said. It shows up almost entirely through reduced hiring of young workers rather than layoffs of people already employed.
“In occupations where AI is used more to complement workers, employment is flat or rising, particularly among more experienced workers,” the Stanford study said.
That is not incidental to the AI hiring boom. It is the other half of the same shift.
AI is displacing the routine work junior employees have always used to prove themselves, while simultaneously creating a narrow set of highly paid technical roles that reward the specific young workers who have real AI expertise. A young worker who can build and deploy AI systems is being pulled ahead of colleagues a decade older. A young worker without those specific skills is competing for a shrinking pool of the entry-level jobs that used to be the default starting point for almost everyone.
Access to the Fast Track Is Narrower Than It Looks
The path into these high-paying AI roles is also less open than the headline growth numbers suggest. The LinkedIn research said 91% of AI workers hold at least a bachelor’s degree, a share that exceeds 95% in several of the highest-paying AI occupations.
Women made up just 26% of new AI hires in 2025, compared with 50% of hires in non-AI occupations, LinkedIn reported Tuesday. The gap widened further up the pay scale, as women accounted for 20% of “head of AI” hires, one of the highest-paying categories in the entire AI job market.
What emerges is a labor market splitting in two directions. A narrow group of young, technically fluent workers is being promoted faster and paid more than any previous generation at the same career stage. Everyone else, including many young workers without a technical degree or specific AI skills, is competing for a shrinking supply of the entry-level roles that used to be everyone’s way in.
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