Forget Big Tech: Small Businesses to Hire Nearly 1 Million Grads in 2026

While fresh-faced grads are throwing their hats in the ring for a job at the world’s biggest companies, they could have a good shot at small businesses ramping up hiring. And some of the jobs that they’re recruiting the most for could stand the test of time in the AI revolution.

About 974,000 recent graduates aged 20 to 24 will be hired at small businesses (firms with one to 49 employees) during the 2026 hiring season, according to a recent report from payroll and benefits platform Gusto. It’s a small bump from last year’s onboarding of 962,000 early-career workers, but the market has still not fully returned to the COVID years of 2020 to 2022.

Mom-and-pop businesses seem to be enthusiastically hiring young workers, while titans of industry pull entry-level listings from their sites. Big companies argue that AI can now do the work of junior staffers, but some smaller owners are pushing back on that notion, actively recruiting recent grads for their tech-savvy and relationship-building skills. Mark Cuban even picked up on the trend, advising fresh-faced grads to eye up small companies for opportunities.

“Large companies are playing defense. Small businesses are playing offense,” says Aaron Terrazas, an economist at Gusto. “When big employers pull back on entry-level hiring, small businesses see an opening… Small business owners are also taking advantage of this, being the first graduating class that grew up with AI as a native tool.”

The Jobs That Are Growing—and Shrinking

Career tracks that once guaranteed bountiful six-figure jobs have since dried up; financial analysts, software engineers, and research associates have all suffered the biggest declines in their share of the new grad job market. Meanwhile, both AI-centric gigs and hands-on roles are juxtaposed as the strongest growing titles.

Founding engineers and AI engineers both saw the strongest growth, and conversely, AI-proof roles like field managers and service technicians are right at the top with them. This captures an interesting dichotomy in Gen Z’s labor market: those leaning into tech for success, and those making their mark in the physical trades.

The AI Revolution Is Ramping Up Tech-Savvy Gigs—and Blue-Collar Work

While Gen Zers leaving college are advised to embrace AI or risk being left behind, a growing number of young professionals are ditching desk jobs for the trades. About 78% of Americans have noticed a rising interest in trade jobs among young adults, according to a 2024 Harris Poll survey for Intuit Credit Karma.

More Gen Z talent is catching on: enrollment in vocational-focused community colleges jumped 16% in 2024, reaching the highest level since tracking began. There was a 23% surge in Gen Z enrollment in construction trades from 2022 to 2023, and a 7% increase in HVAC and vehicle repair programs. About 3.8 million new manufacturing jobs are expected to open up by 2033, according to Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute.

Meanwhile, certain tech roles are also having a renaissance. AI engineer is the fastest-growing job title for young workers on LinkedIn in 2026. Between 2023 and 2025, about 75,000 of 639,000 new AI-related U.S. job postings were AI engineer roles. Enterprise AI platform PromptQL even offered $900 hourly wages to its AI engineers building and deploying AI agents within the business.

“We’re seeing more AI Engineers and more Founding Engineers because companies have an urgent need for young people who are native to AI to innovate,” Terrazas explains. “The graduating class of 2026 is the first college cohort to complete its entire higher education in the AI era.”