5.6% More Employers Are Hiring New Grads Despite AI — Here's What That Means for Your Firm

Published: April 28, 2026 | By: The Crossing Report

A lot of professional services firm owners froze their junior hiring plans in 2024.

They read the headlines: AI will eliminate entry-level jobs, EY is deploying agents to 130,000 employees, KPMG is cutting audit partners. The message felt clear: don't hire someone for a role that won't exist in three years.

NACE just published data that tells a more complicated story. And Salesforce made an announcement this week that deserves to be read alongside it.

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Summary

NACE's Job Outlook 2026 Spring Update shows a 5.6% increase in class of 2026 hiring — and among employers who automated entry-level tasks with AI, most are now using AI to improve new hires rather than eliminate them. For professional services firm owners who froze junior hiring, this is the counter-narrative worth reading. The question isn't "will AI replace this role?" It's "what does a good AI-era year-one look like?"

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The Data: What NACE Found

NACE's Job Outlook 2026 Spring Update documents three things that professional services firm owners need to know.

First: Employers plan to hire 5.6% more class of 2026 graduates than the prior year. This reverses projections from autumn 2025 that forecasted a nearly flat market. The rebound isn't marginal — it's a meaningful reversal of the cautious hiring trend that dominated 2024 and early 2025.

Second: Among employers who have already automated entry-level tasks with AI, most report they are now more inclined to use AI to improve new hire performance rather than eliminate those positions. This is the data point that doesn't fit the dominant narrative. The firms that have gone furthest with AI automation aren't the ones cutting junior headcount — they're the ones using AI to accelerate how fast junior staff become productive.

Third: Demand for AI skills in entry-level job posts has nearly tripled since fall 2025. Hiring hasn't stopped. The description of what a good hire looks like has changed.

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Why KPMG Cutting Partners and NACE Employers Increasing Hiring Are Not Contradictory

The headlines from large firms look alarming if you're a small firm owner deciding whether to hire a new associate.

KPMG cutting audit partners. EY deploying AI agents to 130,000 employees. Big Law restructuring associate classes. These are real moves — but they're happening in a different context than the one you operate in.

Large enterprise firms are cutting senior headcount in specific service lines where AI has automated the work that previously justified those roles at scale. A partner billing 2,000 hours a year on audit procedures that an AI now performs is a different situation than a 12-person accounting firm deciding whether to hire one new associate.

The firms seeing the best outcomes from AI — and reporting higher headcount in the NACE data — are not the firms that replaced their entire talent pipeline with AI. They're the firms that hired, deployed AI to accelerate the new hire's development, and built a stronger internal pipeline as a result.

There is also a second-order problem that's already showing up in firms that stopped hiring in 2024–2025: the talent pipeline gap. You have AI tools. You don't have the developing professionals who will become your senior advisors in 3–5 years. Every month you don't hire at the junior level is a month you fall further behind on building the team you'll need when your current senior staff retire or move on.

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The Three-Part AI-Accelerated Onboarding Model

The question firms should be asking isn't "should I hire?" It's "what does year-one look like if I'm serious about AI?"

Here's a framework that works for professional services firms with 5–50 employees.

Part 1: Identify what AI handles from day one.

Every firm has a base layer of high-volume, lower-complexity work that new hires used to learn by repetition: drafting standard client communications, organizing and summarizing meeting notes, researching comparable cases or precedents, building first drafts of standard deliverables. These tasks were valuable training ground when AI didn't exist. Now they're better handled by AI — with the new hire learning to direct and review that AI output rather than produce it manually.

This frees up the new hire's first year for something more valuable: judgment-layer work.

Part 2: Identify what still requires human learning regardless.

There are tasks that AI cannot accelerate: reading a client's emotional state in a difficult conversation, making a judgment call in a genuinely ambiguous situation, managing a relationship that's fraying, recommending a course of action with incomplete information. These are the skills that make a senior advisor worth what they charge. They can only be developed through real reps — with real clients, in real situations.

Structure year-one so the new hire is accumulating those reps, not spending the year doing tasks that AI does better.

Part 3: Build the structure explicitly.

The mistake most firms make is leaving this implicit. "Use AI where it makes sense" is not a year-one plan. An AI-accelerated onboarding structure names the tools (what to use for what), sets the review expectations (when AI output goes to a client vs. when it needs a human revision), and designates someone as the point person for questions about AI workflow.

Firms that do this consistently report new associates producing at the level of a 2-year associate within their first 6 months. The learning curve compresses. The pipeline strengthens faster.

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What Salesforce's Move Signals for Small Firms

On April 27, 2026, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced the company would hire 1,000 new graduates and interns this year. The explicit framing: AI creates work for new talent, it doesn't displace it.

Salesforce is not a neutral data point here. It is among the most aggressive enterprise AI deployers in the industry. If the company leading enterprise AI deployment is publicly committing to new grad hiring at scale, the "AI eliminates entry-level roles" narrative is running directly against what the largest tech employers are actually doing.

For a small professional services firm, the signal is this: the firms that win the talent game over the next five years are the ones hiring now and building AI-competent professionals from the ground up. The firms that wait are ceding ground on two fronts — they lose the talent and they lose the institutional knowledge of how to deploy AI effectively.

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The One Question to Ask Before Your Next Junior Hire

Not: "Will AI replace this role?"

Instead: "What does year-one look like if I deploy AI to accelerate this person's learning curve?"

If you can answer that question with specifics — here's the AI tools, here's the review structure, here's what I expect from them in 90 days — you're ready to hire. If you can't answer it, solve the structure problem first. Then hire.

The firms that get this right are building their own pipeline of senior advisors for the 2030s. Experienced professionals are only going to get more expensive. The alternative to building your own pipeline is bidding against every other firm in your market for the same small supply of experienced staff.

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FAQ

What did NACE find about employer hiring plans for the class of 2026?

NACE's Job Outlook 2026 Spring Update found employers plan to hire 5.6% more class of 2026 graduates than the prior year, reversing earlier projections of a nearly flat market. More significantly, among employers who had already automated entry-level job tasks with AI, most reported they are now more inclined to use AI to improve new hire performance rather than eliminate those positions. Separately, demand for AI skills in entry-level job posts has nearly tripled since fall 2025.

Should a small professional services firm still hire junior staff in 2026?

Yes — but with a revised year-one model. The firms seeing the best outcomes are using AI to compress learning curves, not eliminate junior roles. A new associate who previously took 3 months to produce reliable first drafts can do so in 3–4 weeks when paired with AI-assisted workflows. This builds the judgment-layer talent pipeline (senior advisors of 2030) at a faster rate. Firms that froze junior hiring in 2024–2025 are now facing a talent pipeline gap: they have AI tools but not the developing professionals who will become senior advisors in 3–5 years.

What is AI-accelerated onboarding for professional services firms?

AI-accelerated onboarding is a structured approach to year-one that uses AI to handle the high-volume, lower-complexity work that new hires previously learned by repetition — freeing them to accumulate experience on the judgment-layer tasks that matter for their career development. Three components: (1) identify which routine tasks AI handles from day one; (2) identify which tasks require human learning regardless — client judgment, complex analysis, relationship management; (3) structure year-one so AI covers the base layer while the new hire accumulates experience at the judgment layer.

What did Salesforce announce about hiring in 2026 and why does it matter?

On April 27, 2026, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced the hiring of 1,000 new graduates and interns, explicitly framing the move as evidence that AI creates work for new talent rather than displacing it. Salesforce is among the most aggressive enterprise AI deployers — if the company leading enterprise AI adoption is publicly committing to new grad hiring at scale, it undercuts the narrative that AI universally eliminates entry-level roles.

What kind of AI skills should I look for when hiring in 2026?

NACE data shows entry-level job posts requiring AI skills have nearly tripled since fall 2025. For professional services firms, the most relevant AI skills for junior hires are: prompt engineering for research and drafting tasks, ability to review and validate AI-generated work product, familiarity with firm-specific AI tools (practice management, document automation, compliance), and comfort with AI-assisted client communication workflows. Generalist AI fluency matters more than specific tool certification at the entry level.

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Related Reading

• AI Talent Hiring in Professional Services — The evolving skill requirements and hiring strategies for AI-era professional services firms
• AI Staff Adoption in Professional Services — How to structure AI adoption across your existing team alongside new hires
• Accounting Firm AI Hiring: What Job Listings Reveal — What firms are actually requiring in 2026 job postings for accounting roles

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