Throughout this week I’ve explored how AI is squeezing out a middle tier in various professions across sectors. When we examine this hollowing out of knowledge work professions, we come face to face with a troubling paradox.

The traditional career ladder isn’t just about progression. It’s about learning. Those mid-tier roles that AI is rapidly consuming aren’t merely jobs; they’re where professionals develop the skills, judgement and experience needed to reach senior levels.

Disappearing trenches

I spoke with a senior partner at a major accounting firm last week who voiced this concern directly. “I worry about where our future partners will come from,” she told me.

“I learned how to be a partner by spending years in the trenches doing the work that AI now handles. That’s where I developed my professional judgement, where I learned to spot problems, where I built relationships with clients.”

This isn’t just an accounting issue. Across law, medicine, software development and other fields, the compression of mid-level roles threatens to create a learning gap that could fundamentally undermine professional development.

Why invest years in education?

We face the very real possibility of creating professional structures where entry-level roles focus on managing AI tools, senior roles require strategic expertise and the bridge between them has simply vanished.

For young people considering these professions, the calculus has changed dramatically. Why invest years and potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal, medical or accounting education when the traditional path to recouping that investment – years of reasonably paid mid-tier work – is disappearing? The financial equation that underpinned professional education for generations is breaking down.

The answer can’t simply be that everyone should aspire to be in the strategic top tier. That’s never been realistic. It’s even less so in a world where those positions are becoming more rarified. Not everyone has the aptitude, opportunity or desire to operate at that level, nor does society need everyone to do so.

Structurally unemployable

What happens to those squeezed out is perhaps the most pressing question. We’re creating a situation where highly educated, highly skilled professionals find themselves structurally unemployable in their chosen fields. The glib answer that they should “learn to code” rings particularly hollow when coding itself is increasingly automated.

I’ve watched friends with decades of professional experience face this reality. A mid-career copywriter I know recently confided that after 15 years of building a solid career writing marketing content, she’s watching as clients increasingly use AI tools for work they previously hired her to do. “I’m too experienced to start over,” she told me, “but not specialised enough to be irreplaceable.”

The question of universal basic income isn’t theoretical in this context. It’s increasingly pragmatic. If we’re creating economic structures where significant portions of highly skilled workers cannot find employment that makes the most of their training and experience, then we need new approaches to distributing resources and opportunity.

Future shortages

Equally concerning is how organisations will develop future talent. The partner I mentioned earlier put it bluntly: “We’re eating our seed corn.”

By eliminating the roles where professionals traditionally developed expertise, we’re potentially creating future shortages of truly experienced professionals with the judgement that only comes from years of hands-on experience.

Some firms are experimenting with hybrid approaches, by creating rotational programmes where junior staff work alongside AI tools but with deliberate mentoring from seniors to develop judgment and expertise.

Others are reconceptualising mid-tier roles to focus more on interpretation and client relationships rather than the technical work that AI handles.

Learning gap

What’s clear is that we cannot simply allow this hollowing out to proceed without addressing the learning gap it creates. The traditional professional development model relied on a progression that now risks disappearing.

Without deliberate intervention, we face not just economic disruption for current mid-tier professionals, but potentially an expertise crisis in the coming decades.

The organisations and educational institutions that recognise this challenge early and develop new pathways for professional development will likely define the next era of knowledge work.

Those that simply eliminate mid-tier roles without addressing how expertise develops may find themselves facing unexpected consequences when the current generation of senior professionals retires.

For individuals navigating this shift, the path forward likely involves seeking out learning opportunities that explicitly develop judgement, relationship skills and strategic thinking rather than technical implementation.

The future belongs to those who can identify where human expertise remains essential and deliberately develop those capacities.