How AI is Reshaping the Job Market for SIPA Graduates

(Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios)

Artificial intelligence is reshaping white-collar work. SIPA’s Career Advancement Center helps SIPA students stay ahead. 

By Katie MacDougall

Artificial intelligence is transforming the policy and development fields that SIPA graduates pursue, as well as the skills that they’ll need to succeed. “You’re not going to lose your job to an AI, but you’re going to lose your job to someone who uses AI,” Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang warned at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference earlier this year. “Every job will be affected, and immediately. It is unquestionable.”

Tech leaders like Huang and OpenAI’s Sam Altman have made sweeping claims about AI’s potential to upend the workforce. Altman has predicted that AI will completely reshape the job market, explaining to the Federal Reserve that some jobs will be “just like totally, totally gone”. But economists and career experts caution that, so far, the real change has been incremental: job functions have been reshaped, but rarely eliminated.

In August 2025, the  NYC Comptroller’s Office released an aptly titled report “This Report Was Not AI-Generated: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on New York City Jobs,” in which it found that positions with the highest exposure to AI, such as policy analysts and consultants, have already seen large declines in job postings. This bodes poorly for SIPA students who will graduate soon and find themselves fishing from a rapidly draining pool of opportunity.

Automation tools like Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) have long influenced how job seekers craft resumes and applications, since employers use these programs to automatically scan, sort, and filter resumes for keywords that match the job descriptions. As a result, job seekers have learned to tailor their language so that their resume is approved by the ATS and passed onto the recruiters. The next wave of AI promises to go further, affecting how candidates are hired, managed, and evaluated on the job. Companies like Workable promise that their AI will help companies find candidates for job postings more efficiently, write more personalized emails to potential hires, and suggest more impactful interview questions. Another company, Kula, claims that their AI enables recruiters to screen candidates twice as fast using AI-produced “best-fit” scores and cut recruiting costs by 30%. 

At SIPA, the Career Advancement Center (CAC) has developed programming to help students adapt to these shifts, including events such as “Using AI to Target Your Application to the Job Description.” SIPA also offers courses like Fall 2025’s “Generative AI,” which covers the basics of large language models and examines how they are built, as well as exploring the societal implications of Generative AI, such as job loss, bias in AI systems, and how governments may regulate AI systems. 

According to Dr. Paula King, Senior Director of the CAC, and Executive Director Meg Heenehan, the main challenge is job evolution.

“It’s more about working smarter to achieve new goals,” Dr. King explained. “AI may free you from more basic tasks, and it will give you new opportunities for innovation.”

Heenehan added that the key for students is skill-building. “Students should be serious about learning these platforms and making sure that those AI skills are listed on their resumes,” she said. These skills can include using Generative AI tools to analyze data or using Natural Language Processing to synthesize survey responses and public comments. 

Still, not everyone shares the CAC’s measured optimism. Meta announced the elimination of 600 jobs in its AI division, including 100 jobs dedicated to monitoring privacy and integrity risks. Meanwhile, Deloitte’s use of AI in a $290,000 report to the Australian government was discovered because the AI had hallucinated academic papers and federal court judgements. 

A group of SIPA students outside of Revson Plaza explained that they’d revised their resumes with an even greater attention to how AI would parse their resume, but commiserated that there were few guidelines on how to do so effectively.

The impact of AI on the workforce is rapidly evolving. While the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported in September that only 12% of service firms expect to hire fewer workers due to AI, that figure is projected to rise in 2026 as adoption accelerates.

For SIPA students, the takeaway is nuanced. Graduates entering government, consulting, and nonprofits will likely find themselves managing AI tools, crafting regulation for them, or analyzing their social impacts. They are less likely to compete directly against them—at least, for now.