Professors have a positive outlook on jobs and AI

By Kai Olbrich and Dylan Buechler

This article is featured in the April print edition of the Sower newspaper. 

The popularization and advancement of artificial intelligence technology over the past four years raises questions about what is might mean for the workforce, but Concordia professors are confident in the future prospects for graduates.

Researchers from JP Morgan and the U.S. Census Bureau found that unemployment has increased among recent college graduates, with technology sectors are being hit particularly hard.

A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas indicated the overall impact may be small, but it linked AI to decreases in employment only for younger workers. “Among young labor market entrants, the job finding rate has held steady only for jobs with low AI exposure, while it has declined for groups with higher AI exposure since November 2022,” the authors wrote. “Since its recent peak in November 2023, the job finding rate of the young, most AI-exposed group has declined by more than 3 percentage points.”

A Stanford University report found that increased use of generative AI was associated with a 16% decrease in employment for early career workers, age 22 to 25, in careers most exposed to AI technology.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers asks employers to rate the job market for college graduates each year. The 2025-2026 results came in the worst since the COVID-19 pandemic, with 46% rating it fair and 51% good to excellent. This is lower than the 90% good to excellent rating in 2022-23.

Concordia Professor of Business Administration Timothy Heidorn said much of the job uncertainty for college students may be due to the transition period, where business owners don’t know how AI will affect the workplace.

His advice to students is to get good at using AI because employers want to bring in people who understand how to use it. He said that for people who are established in their professions, AI can be tricky to get the hang of, so young people may pick it up more easily and use it to optimize the workplace for everyone.

Heidorn has lived through many technological innovations, from word processors to the internet, and has found that instead of getting rid of jobs, new tech changes how certain things are done and often makes them more efficient. Heidorn said he likes how AI takes out much of the drudgery out of some tasks and allows him to spend his time in more productive ways.

Heidorn said AI often makes mistakes, but pointed out that over the last few years, it has gotten better with its answers and explanations. He said that AI should never be fully trusted, but instead, people should be the boss of AI and correct it when needed.

“Don’t believe the AI, train the AI,” Heidorn said. “Be the boss. You’re the boss.”

Heidorn said that no matter what happens in the job market and the workplace overall, AI and machines can never truly replace people because humans have bodies and an eternal nature.

“From a Christian perspective, it will never replace us, because we have bodies, biological bodies, that die and get resurrected from the dead,” Heidorn said. “AI doesn’t have that. We are different. We are just plain different.”

Concordia Assistant Professor of Education Jerrita Staehr was also not worried about the future job market regarding the education field.
She acknowledged that we could receive knowledge from AI, but to learn the skills of how to interpret and apply that knowledge is something that can only be found in the classroom. There is a unique human aspect to teaching that AI is unable to capture.

“At the heart of education, we have the disposition. When AI comes at you, you can train a chatbot to kind of have a personality. You can, a little bit. But then there’s that heart of the educator,” Staehr said. “And I believe this, that God created us to be in community and in communication with one another. And education is really about relationships and communication.”

Concordia Professor of English Gabriel Haley said most employers likely will integrate AI into their workflow and train people on the job how to use it effectively.

“I think there will be many jobs where the boss would want the employees to learn some kind of use of AI, in part, because there’s just a sense that it should be used,” Haley said. “Sometimes it’s done because there are repeated tasks that could be automated.”

Haley said there may be some job shuffling during the next few years as employers figure out how to integrate the new technologies, but he predicted that eventually things will settle and students will still be able to get positions with a standard degree in their field.

He said AI might free up some space for workers to gain higher education. There might be more opportunities and a need for people to have a more well-rounded education through liberal arts. Haley said that pursuing a career will still be valuable, but now people will need to cultivate their minds.

“Somebody who knows actual content, that would include a kind of understanding of humanity that comes from a liberal arts perspective of education, not just a narrow set of skills that make you skilled at one task,” he said.

Sophomore Isaac Herrington said that he thinks his future career in graphic design could lose some entry-level positions. Some companies, when designing logos or other media, might turn to AI for free or cheaper designs, he said, but added they will still need to employ graphic designers.

“But if they care about their reputation, or if they care about work done well, they’re going to look for a designer, because AI can’t design. It’s just going to copy,” he said. “I think there will always be a pretty decent job market, but at that lowest level, there’s not going to be much because they’re just going to go for the cheap pick. Which is free AI.”

Senior Computer Science major Kondwani Mtawali is worried about the future of entry-level computer science majors. He has heard tech leaders discuss shifting much of software maintenance to AI agents. He is also concerned with the software engineering process, where traditionally, there are multiple steps with people. Instead of learning a broad range of computer science skills, Mtawali wants to become an expert in data analytics so he can appeal to employers who may be turning to AI for more routine tasks.