AI is likely to eliminate more than one in four teen jobs in the U.S. by 2030, according to a new research paper authored by a California high school senior. The biggest losses will hit exactly where teens work most today: cashiers, fast food counters, retail floors and basic customer service.
“My analysis shows that AI can replace thousands of jobs by 2030,” teenager Karissa Tang told me recently on the TechFirst podcast. “That’s the prediction within just the leading top 10 teenage jobs, which is around 50% of teenage employment. And that’s a 27% decline in 2030 from 2024 employment figures. So massive implications: it’s not looking too great for us teens.”
Adults are already worried about AI taking their jobs. But teens might have it even worse, Tang says. The problem is that teen labor is by nature entry-level, and therefore concentrated in low-skill service sectors now undergoing the fastest automation. This is a big deal: according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 5.6 million teens were employed in 2024, roughly 30% of Americans aged 16–19.
MIT researchers recently estimated AI could affect roughly 12% of the total U.S. workforce. What that top-down number misses, however, is concentration risk: teens cluster in the very jobs AI replaces first.
Tang is not your ordinary California teenager. She interns as a research assistant at UCLA, held a paid internship at a venture capital firm and founded her own board game company which she launched via Kickstarter. She’s also written a 20-page research paper on AI and teen unemployment that draws on published research, U.S. government data as well as publicly available data on employment and automation.
The motivation behind this report? A boba tea shop.
“My biggest motivation was my aunt, who runs a boba shop,” Tang told me. “Some classmates even asked me if my aunt was hiring. But she told me they didn’t need as many workers that summer, which surprised me.”
The reason: automated ordering kiosks are replacing cashiers. And not only in boba tea shops:
“When I looked at tea shops and cafés in my area, I noticed kiosks replacing cashiers,” Tang says. “Instead of two cashiers, there are now zero. That’s two jobs per shop gone.”
Some jobs will be hit harder than others, and cashiers are right on the firing line. Tang’s analysis projects a 54% reduction in teen cashier employment, equivalent to 385,000 lost jobs, largely driven by the rapid expansion of self-checkout systems and cashier-less retail. Fast food counter workers follow closely, with a projected 37% decline, as AI-powered kiosks replace face-to-face ordering. Retail sales roles fall 30%, while entry-level customer service jobs drop 39% due to generative AI chatbots.
It’s not rocket science: the more repetitive and exchange-based the role, the faster automation moves in. And teens dominate those roles because they are entering the labor pool on the bottom rung. They occupy the lowest-skill slice of each occupation, often handling the easiest tasks, making them more automatable than adult-held versions of the same job.
Is there any good news?
There are some jobs that are relatively safer.
In the short term, jobs that require mobility, situational awareness, or human connection fare much better. Tang projects zero displacement for hosts and hostesses, and minimal losses for stockers, cooks and food prep workers. (Of course, robots are coming there too as robots take over the kitchen and cost less than half of what a human worker would make.)
The loss of teen jobs is bad enough when you look at lost revenue as kids save up for college or other needs. The bigger concern may be what disappears along with the jobs.
“Teens rely on early jobs to learn responsibility, social skills, and work ethic,” Lomit Patel, a chief marketing officer, noted on my LinkedIn post about this interview. “AI may replace tasks, but we must create pathways for youth to gain meaningful experience in ways that complement automation, not just compete with it.”
The problem is that just as on the adult side, schools and policymakers are unprepared. AI adoption is moving faster than education systems – or laws and regulations – can adjust, while teens are left competing for a shrinking pool of service jobs that once provided training and paychecks for millions of young workers.
Tang’s recommendations to schools and governments?
Expand digital literacy, emphasize critical thinking and financial skills and create alternative pathways such as paid internships, apprenticeships, coaching roles and community work: all jobs where humans still matter. She also points to entrepreneurship and project-based learning as ways teens can build value outside traditional employment.
But clearly, the first rung on the career ladder is wobbling. The question is whether we can move quickly enough to shore it up, or replace it entirely.