As AI reshapes white-collar work and graduate schemes shrink, one City veteran says the safest hedge may be to stop waiting for callbacks — and start building something.
Quentin Nason, a 35-year finance veteran who spent two decades in investment banking and 15 years in asset management, has watched both his children and countless students hit a wall trying to break into finance.
Through City Pay It Forward, his independent, self-funded charity that teaches financial literacy in UK and US schools, the former Deutsche Bank managing director and now vice chair of the London Foundation for Banking and Finance, said he sees daily evidence of how hard it’s become for graduates to get a foot in the door.
“We have a generation, the generation coming through now, where we say, ‘Go to the best schools, study hard, get the grades, you know, take the student loans,’ right?” he told Business Insider.
“They’re now coming out, and they said I did what you wanted, I studied hard, and I did everything you told me to, and where is my job?” he said.
“That social contract feels broken.”
AI squeezes the first rung
Nason said entry-level roles in the City of London and on Wall Street are disappearing, with competition so fierce that “there’s less than a 1% probability you’ll get a job.”
He blames a perfect storm of AI-driven mass applications and shrinking graduate intakes.
“Recruiters are overwhelmed, candidates get no feedback — it’s crickets. The process is dehumanized.”
That pressure is showing up in hard data.
A Stanford University study from August found a 13% decline in employment for early-career workers between 22 and 25 years old in the most AI-exposed jobs, including software engineering and customer service.
The researchers found that by mid-2025, employment for young developers was down nearly 20% from its 2022 peak — even as older cohorts’ employment rose.
In August, PwC confirmed it will cut graduate hiring by about a third in the US over the next three years and by 200 roles in the UK, saying “the rapid pace of technological change is reshaping how we work.”
A generation on edge
For Nason, the result is a brewing crisis of expectation.
“They did what society told them to do, worked hard, went to university, took on £50,000 ($67,000) of debt, and now find themselves locked out,” he said.
He fears that frustration may soon erupt. He pointed to protests in Nepal and Peru as early signs of a youth-driven backlash.
“They mobilize fast,” he said. “The anger is bubbling up.”
Entrepreneurship as the escape hatch
Yet amid the bleak outlook, Nason sees a clear opportunity in entrepreneurship.
He said his charity now emphasizes startup thinking and financial literacy for students, shifting from traditional career coaching to what he called the “language of entrepreneurship.”
He cited Warren Buffett, who told Vanity Fair in 2011 he’d read a study finding that the age at which people started their first businesses is one of the biggest predictors of future success, though Buffett didn’t identify the study.
“To start a business and not only be good at math, reading, speaking, confidence, drive, it’s an amalgam of so many skills, and if you’re able to harness that at a young age, then you’re able to do like the 10,000-hour rule, right?” he said, referencing Malcolm Gladwell’s theory that mastery takes 10,000 hours of practice.
“In a world where everything is changing,” he said, “that’s a very powerful combination.”
He also said he wants Gen Z to look beyond traditional finance hubs to the next wave of automation, robotics, blockchain, and drones.
“Rather than chasing yesterday’s jobs, chase tomorrow’s,” he said.
Even as AI erodes entry roles, Nason remains hopeful.
“Half the industries that will exist in the future don’t exist today, and we’ll find out in the next five years,” he said.
“The challenge is to try to find where the tide is going.”
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