Anthropic says its workforce has been getting older, but is also spending more time in meetings

Anthropic says it is no longer hiring so many junior/entry-level roles Many technical workers are becoming AI managers, and so are spending more time in meetings The company says its "deep adoption" makes it a useful "early warning system" for AI's impacts One of the biggest AI developers in the wor

<![CDATA[ <article> <ul><li><strong>Anthropic says it is no longer hiring so many junior/entry-level roles</strong></li><li><strong>Many technical workers are becoming AI managers, and so are spending more time in meetings</strong></li><li><strong>The company says its "deep adoption" makes it a useful "early warning system" for AI's impacts</strong></li></ul><p>One of the biggest AI developers in the world has released a brand-new <a href="https://www.anthropic.com/research/employment-at-anthropic" target="_blank">study</a> on how AI is transforming its own workforce - but we're not sure whether it's good or bad news.</p><p>Starting off with the bad news, Anthropic uncovered a considerable drop in junior workers – junior workers accounted for just 14% of technical staff by mid-2026, down from 21% in early 2025.</p><p>The proportion of junior employees among the company's new technical hires fell even more dramatically in the same period, from 27% to just 9%.</p><h2 id="is-ai-replacing-some-workers-but-not-all">Is AI replacing some workers, but not all?</h2><p>Ultimately, the paper concludes that artificial intelligence is handling more and more entry-level roles, therefore Anthropic hasn't needed to hire as many junior workers. </p><p>In fact, hiring on the whole has seemingly dropped thanks to AI-induced productivity gains. "[Anthropic] has hired less per dollar of revenue than an earlier generation of large tech companies," the company explained.</p><p>Crucially, the Claude maker isn't reporting a declining technical workforce. Quite the opposite, as it continues to grow, but those technical workers are now handling higher-level, managerial-type roles.</p><p>AI's biggest impact at Anthropic has been the number of code commits per engineer, up 5.1x from the end of 2025 to mid-2026. Data queries per data scientist (up 3.1x), contracts per legal worker (up 3.1x) and deals per salesperson (up 1.7x) are also all trending upward.</p><h2 id="humans-remain-in-the-loop">Humans remain in the loop</h2><p>More broadly, the company sees many workers transitioning into decision-making roles, and that's increased the amount of time they spend in meetings. A 20% median increase was observed across the workforce.</p><p>"Engineers described becoming leaders and managers of agents; non-technical employees described doing more and more of the strategic parts of their job."</p><p>Despite massive productivity gains through automation, Anthropic also confirmed that some roles just have to remain human. They include things like sales calls and interviews.</p><p>Still, human workers are seen as something of a bottleneck in the world of AI. Claude spends around 80% of interactive session time waiting for human input, the research revealed.</p><p>Looking ahead, Anthropic has projected where we could be heading and how things could change with all employers. One of the biggest shifts could come in hiring, where a new set of skills is likely to be prioritized – including "autonomy and judgment."</p><p>A more optimistic approach admits that hiring is indeed falling, but job opportunities could actually be exploding. "One possibility is single-person start-ups, each with a human founder steering swarms of agents to rake in billions in revenue."</p><p>Ultimately, Anthropic says its "deep adoption of AI... makes it a useful case," and that it exists as an "early warning system" – so maybe we look at AI companies to see how AI is going to impact jobs?</p><figure class="van-image-figure pull-right inline-layout" data-bordeaux-image-check ><div class='image-full-width-wrapper'><div class='image-widthsetter' style="max-width:676px;"><p class="vanilla-image-block" style="padding-top:31.51%;"><img id="diM9tpwF2Lz85R8q85CT78" name="tr-g_news" alt="Google logo on a black background next to text reading 'Click to follow TechRadar'" src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/diM9tpwF2Lz85R8q85CT78-1920-80.jpg" mos="" align="right" fullscreen="" width="676" height="213" attribution="" endorsement="" class="pull-rightinline"></p></div></div></figure> </article> ]]>