AI, disappearing entry-level work, and the urgent need to rebuild pathways into participation
by Richard Kirtley
Much of the conversation at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos has revolved around artificial intelligence, productivity and growth. These are familiar themes, repeated each January against a backdrop of confidence and inevitability. However, beneath the language of innovation sits a quieter reality, one that matters far more to the people we work with every day.
The first rung on the employment ladder is quietly, but surely, disappearing.
This isn’t happening through mass redundancies or dramatic announcements. It is happening through absence. Entry-level roles are not being removed; they are simply no longer being created. Tasks that once formed junior jobs are automated, absorbed into software, or bundled into more senior roles. The result is a labour market that increasingly assumes experience before someone has been given a chance to gain it.
For many of the people Purple Shoots supports, entry-level work has never been a trivial stage of life. It is how someone rebuilds after illness, caring responsibilities, prison, redundancy, or a long stretch outside formal employment. It is where confidence returns, routines are re-established, and the sense of being useful again begins to take root. When that rung is missing, people do not smoothly transition into higher-skilled work. They stall.
At Davos, much has been said about reskilling and lifelong learning. These ideas matter, but they often assume a level of stability that many people simply do not yet have. Reskilling takes time, money, headspace and hope. For someone juggling insecurity, telling them to retrain without first addressing how they survive in the meantime is not a strategy; it is a postponement.
As traditional entry points into employment shrink, more people are being nudged toward self-employment. In theory, this is often framed as entrepreneurial opportunity. In practice, we see something more complex. Many people turn to self-employment not because they have a fully formed business idea, but because employment feels closed off and the welfare system is unforgiving. Self-employment becomes a way to earn something, anything, without being penalised for trying.
This is where there is both risk and real opportunity.
Handled badly, self-employment simply transfers risk from institutions to individuals. People carry unstable incomes, personal debt, and stress, while the system avoids responsibility. Handled well, however, self-employment can act as a new kind of first rung and one that allows people to learn by doing, to rebuild confidence gradually, and to create income pathways that fit around health, caring, or other realities.
The difference lies in how proactive we are willing to be as a society.
If we are not prepared to see a sharp rise in welfare dependency, and there is little political appetite for that, then we must be serious about creating supported pathways forward. That means recognising that many people will need permission to be unfinished. They will need space to experiment, to earn modestly at first, to make mistakes without falling off a cliff.
This is where innovation is not about technology, but about systems.
We need finance that understands transition rather than perfection. Small amounts of patient, affordable capital that assume learning will happen along the way. We need business support that is relational, not transactional and support that walks alongside people as they find their feet, rather than judging them against unrealistic benchmarks. We need benefit systems that do not punish early steps into self-employment, but actively encourage them. Finally, we need to accept that not every viable pathway looks like a fast-growing business.
At Purple Shoots, we already see what happens when these elements come together. People who were previously locked out of opportunity begin to stabilise. Confidence grows. Income becomes more predictable. What starts as survival slowly becomes sustainability. This does not happen overnight, and it does not happen without support, but it does happen.
What was striking about Davos this year was not a lack of concern about inequality, but a lack of urgency about the mechanics of inclusion. If entry-level jobs no longer make commercial sense, then the responsibility for rebuilding access does not disappear. It shifts. Either we design new routes forward, or we accept a widening gap between those who can navigate a high-skill economy and those who cannot.
An economy without a first rung is not efficient. It is brittle.
If we fail to act, the consequences are predictable. More insecure work. More people cycling between short-term self-employment and hardship. More resentment, more division, and a deeper sense that the economy works for some but not for others. Once that trust is lost, it is hard to rebuild.
The choice facing us is not whether work will change. That is already happening. The choice is whether we respond passively, allowing exclusion to deepen, or proactively, by building new pathways that recognise how people actually live and recover.
Self-employment, done well, can be part of that solution only if it is treated not as a dumping ground for risk, but as a supported bridge into participation.
If we want a future with fewer people left behind, we must be willing to rebuild the first rung even if it no longer looks like it used to.