Still Waiting for the Shock: AI’s Limited Impact on Early-Career Vacancies, Skills and Tasks

This analysis of 620,000 UK apprenticeship vacancies suggests that AI is not the primary cause of declining opportunities, which instead stems from structural labour market weaknesses. The research utilized DistilRoBERTa to map digital skills from unstructured text and Google Gemini 1.5 Flash to dynamically generate an occupation-specific task taxonomy. Econometric results show no significant impact on overall vacancy volumes or technical task density. However, a modest increase in digital skill requirements was found for higher-level roles, suggesting AI complements advanced qualifications rather than displacing them. While intermediate roles have collapsed, findings attribute this to policy shifts like the Apprenticeship Levy rather than automation.