Thanks to AI automation, Generation Z is being actively pushed out of the IT industry: the share of employees aged 21 to 25 in tech giants has halved.
As Fortune reports, experts say these changes could create a talent vacuum and stifle innovation in the long term.
It is noted that Generation Z are digital natives who grew up in the era of YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram and Facebook; and now they are some of the most active users of artificial intelligence in their personal and professional lives. However, Silicon Valley technology companies are not retaining this generation, but rather actively displacing it.
According to Pave, a company that develops compensation management software, the share of young employees aged 21 to 25 at tech companies has halved in the past two years. In January 2023, the share of young employees at large public companies was 15%. By August 2025, their share had fallen to 6.8%.
At the same time, the average age of technology company professionals has increased significantly in two and a half years. From January 2023 to July 2025, the average age of all employees at large public tech companies increased from 34.3 to 39.4 years — a difference of more than 5 years.
Millennials are reportedly ruling the tech industry and clinging to their positions as the economy reels from uncertainty over tariffs, inflation drives up the cost of living, and artificial intelligence takes jobs away. Meanwhile, buzzers just starting out are hoping to jumpstart their careers.
"If you’re 35 or 40 years old, you’re pretty established in your career, you have skills that you know cannot yet be disrupted by AI," said Matt Schulman, founder and CEO of Pave. According to him, large companies like Salesforce, Meta and Microsoft are becoming much more efficient thanks to the advent of AI. And, despite the rapid growth of profits, they are reducing the number of employees at the lower levels. As soon as tech giants get rid of junior positions occupied by buzzers, their staff will inevitably age. According to experts, as Fortune notes, this can create many problems for innovation and long-term stability of the business.
According to the publication, in the US alone, companies announced more than 800,000 layoffs from January to July 2025, a 75% increase from the year before. "Mass tech layoffs and a reduction in entry-level jobs means it’s harder for Gen Z to find open roles to apply for," said Jerry Doris, HR director at Justworks. Anticipating possible employment problems, young people are increasingly choosing other fields than IT.
As we wrote earlier, 42% of Ukrainian IT professionals looking for work in 2025 have lowered their salary expectations. This is one of the key findings of a large-scale survey. More than half of job seekers spend more than two months looking for a new job. In 2023, 49% of specialists in Ukraine found a job in less than a month, while this year only 35%. The trend is similar abroad. DevOps/SRE, data specialists, and recruiters are the fastest to find employment.
Also, as of the summer of 2025, 48% of Ukrainian IT specialists are somehow thinking about moving abroad, 3% less than in the same period in 2024. Only 14% are actively thinking about leaving Ukraine: 2% will move in the near future, and 12% — when the borders open.