We're Failing Gen Alpha

Just about around 2035, we’ll be celebrating the first Gen Alpha graduates from college. Hallmark is going to need to work on some new cards before then.

A few recommendations:

1. “You can’t believe every job forecast. But we still believe in you!”
2. “Underemployment isn’t that bad. You’ll find a good job soon!”
3. “Sorry. Good luck.”

My hunch is that the graduates will ask for something stronger than cake when they realize we missed the window to update our labor market for the Age of AI. As of April 29, 2026, expert forecasters expect unemployment among recent grads to reach 13.5 percent in 2035. Underemployment may be near 60 percent. Given that most of us will pack an umbrella if we see a 50 percent chance of rain, if policymakers think these experts--including renowned economists--have a coin flip’s chance of being right, then they have some work to do.

Four years into this AI moment, policymakers have been caught flat-footed — waiting for the dust to settle before attempting to intervene. In earlier eras, this may have been a wise strategy. But waiting carries its own costs, and those costs compound. Every year policymakers defer is a year the labor market drifts further from the rules built for it. By the time things begin to settle down (if ever), our Gen Alpha grads will be justifiably upset that we did not more seriously prepare for a world in which their job prospects were historically dismal.

Now’s the time for dynamic legislation. Lawmakers cannot move at the speed of AI. That’s by design. The Framers knew that the only thing worse than inaction is hasty, heavy-handed, and practically irreversible legislation. They designed a process to methodically vet proposals and wait until a durable consensus formed. Good policy results from deliberation and data, not panic and popular pressure. Rather than try to speed up the legislative process, we simply need to alter its focus.

Instead of passing a static law that effectively assumes tomorrow will look like today, state and federal legislatures need to adopt the practice of legislating for many different tomorrows. For example, this may look like the creation of an AI Literacy Corps--made up of individuals between 18 and 30--tasked with helping small businesses and nonprofits learn how to use AI tools. This massive effort would lie dormant until unemployment among recent graduates reached nine percent, at which point an AI Literacy Corps activates automatically. Suddenly, if and when things go south for young people, Congress will not start from step one. Their work will have shifted from ideation to implementation. Like the Civilian Conservation Corps, it’d be a means to keep young folks in the employment game--learning new skills, meeting new people, and actively contributing to a brighter future.

Of course, Congress could opt to get even more creative. They could call for a 'Launch Fund' available to young Americans if unemployment hit 15 percent. The fund could capitalize new ventures started by recent graduates, underwrite relocation to regions with stronger labor markets, or finance the rapid credentialing programs that AI-native industries will demand. The structure matters more than the specifics: a defined pool of capital, a clear trigger, a defined beneficiary population, and rules written in advance rather than improvised in crisis. Lawmakers might even prefer a portfolio of metrics to determine whether a particular policy response has been triggered. They could appoint a council of independent economists to set the thresholds. The permutations are endless, and that's the point.

We do not know what's ahead for the AI economy. Economists expect a transition period from today's jobs to those of the AI economy that may be particularly painful for young people. The hope is that the transition will be short and the jobs of tomorrow will emerge sooner than expected.

Picture two versions of 2035. In the first, Congress treated forecast uncertainty as a reason to prepare. The Literacy Corps stood ready. The Launch Fund had rules already written. When unemployment crossed the trigger, programs were activated, and graduates went to work. In the second, Congress treated forecast uncertainty as a reason to wait. The hearings began the month the unemployment numbers landed. The bill markups stretched into the following Congress. The graduates waited.

Dynamic legislation is not a workaround of the Framers' design. It is their design taken seriously. Deliberation about contingencies is still deliberation. Triggers set in advance, by a Congress acting in calm rather than crisis, are the opposite of panic legislation. The methodical vetting the Framers prized happens before the storm rather than during it.

The graduates of 2035 are eight years old today. We know roughly how many of them there will be. We know roughly when they will enter the labor market. We know roughly what the economists fear awaits them. We can keep hoping the forecasts are wrong. Or we can legislate as though we believed the forecasts we commissioned.

Hallmark will write whatever cards the moment calls for. Congress should write the laws that make the more congratulatory cards possible.

Kevin Frazier is an adjunct professor of Delaware Law and an affiliated scholar of emerging technology and constitutional law at St. Thomas University College of Law.