AI has already reduced full-time employment among computer science graduates by more than 15 percentage points in three years. Cook Pierce explains what a fundamentally different labor market means for retirement plans that assumed the next generation would be financially self-sufficient on the same timeline as previous ones.
Most retirement conversations focus on the person retiring. How much income will they need. When will they stop working. What their portfolio needs to do between now and then.
Fewer retirement conversations account for what happens when the generation behind them enters a fundamentally different labor market than anyone planned for.
That conversation is becoming necessary.
AI has already reduced full-time employment among computer science graduates by more than 15 percentage points in three years. Job postings for new graduates on major recruiting platforms are down 50% from their 2022 peak. More than half of employers report having considered replacing entry-level workers with AI entirely.
These are not projections. They are current data points from a labor market that is shifting faster than most financial plans have accounted for.
The workers most affected are not mid-career professionals with established expertise and networks. They are new graduates entering the workforce for the first time. The people whose parents are, in many cases, within ten years of retirement.
Computer science and technology fields have seen the sharpest declines. Full-time employment in those fields fell from nearly 70% to 55% in the three years following the release of ChatGPT in 2022. Undergraduate enrollment in computer programming dropped 26% in 2025 alone as students began recognizing the shift in real time.
The Family bucket of a sound retirement plan accounts for the financial relationship between a retiree and the next generation. That relationship has typically been planned around a straightforward assumption. Children finish school, enter the workforce, become financially self-sufficient within a few years and the financial dynamic between generations normalizes.
That assumption is being stress tested in ways that are not yet reflected in most retirement plans.
When a graduate spends an extended period underemployed or earning significantly less than projected, the financial support that flows from parents can extend well beyond what was anticipated. Supplementing rent, helping with student loans, assisting with healthcare costs during a gap in employer coverage. These are not dramatic financial events. They are quiet ongoing costs that accumulate over years and redirect resources that were intended for retirement.
For someone within ten years of retirement, an unexpected multi-year period of supporting an adult child financially is one of the most common and least planned for retirement disruptions we see. It does not have to be dramatic to be consequential.
It does not mean a generation is doomed. The labor market is not contracting uniformly. Research shows that while AI is eliminating entry-level roles in certain fields, the demand for experienced decision-makers, people who can navigate complexity, manage systems and apply judgment in unpredictable situations, is increasing. The same technological shift that is reducing some roles is increasing the value of others.
It also does not mean market investments in technology companies are unwise. The companies driving AI adoption are among the most profitable in the S&P 500. The economic value being created is real even as the labor market consequences are uneven.
What it does mean is that a retirement plan built around the assumption of a straightforward generational financial timeline may need to account for a longer and more variable support period than previous generations required.
Has your retirement income plan accounted for the possibility that the generation behind you enters the workforce in a fundamentally different environment and may need support on a different timeline than you planned for?
If the answer is uncertain, that uncertainty is worth addressing now while there is still time to structure for it rather than absorb it.
