Apprenticeship and the Risk of a Lost Generation

The alarm bells are ringing. Artificial intelligence is already reshaping the labour market, and it is the youngest who are paying the highest price. What was long expected to be a gradual shift has arrived abruptly, and with it a structural reversal that few anticipated.

According to Les Échos, since the arrival of generative AI, employment for 22 to 25 year olds in the most AI exposed software roles has fallen by more than 13 percent, while employment for older cohorts has increased. This is no passing fluctuation. Historically, each technological wave, from the steam engine to the computer, expanded opportunities for the young. This time, the arrow points the other way: the novice is excluded, the senior rewarded. Entry level roles are collapsing. The first step into the workforce is breaking.

The consequences are grave. A society that denies its youth the discipline of apprenticeship produces not only unemployment, but a cohort deprived of resilience, experience, and legitimacy.

The risk is magnified in a region where 30 percent of the population is below the age of 30. That is not a marginal statistic. It is the defining reality of our societies. One third of the region’s future is waiting at the threshold, unable to take the first step. To deny them access is not only an economic mistake. It is to compromise continuity, to weaken stability, and to gamble with legitimacy itself.

This is where governance with purpose becomes urgent. Governance is not merely the management of capital or the execution of grand projects. Its deeper duty is to secure continuity, to prepare the Next Generation, and to transmit legitimacy. Purposeful governance invests in apprenticeship ladders, in educational studios where students learn by solving real problems, and in portfolios of outcomes that demonstrate ability through evidence, not credentials alone. It empowers families to act as incubators of responsibility, corporations to rebuild entry pathways, and governments to reinforce these efforts with incentives and deliberate policy.

If these actors hesitate, the vacuum will not remain empty. History shows that when institutions fail to create a first step, the young eventually carve out their own entry points, often in ways that destabilise the wider order. The cost of inaction is fragility, while the cost of action is investment in continuity, resilience, and trust.

Wealth may accumulate, projects may multiply, power may appear secure. But without apprenticeship there is no renewal. And without renewal, no society endures.

W.