Agencies cut under-25 numbers by a fifth and left most of their apprenticeship money unspent.

The number first. In the twelve months to 1 September 2025, employees aged 25 and under in IPA member agencies fell from 3,632 to 2,936. A fall of 19.2 per cent, or 696 people.

Hold the size of that in mind. This is one trade body's membership, not a national total, and 696 people would not register in any official series. The reason it is worth your attention is not its scale. It is that we can see the mechanism.

Two things to say before the read.

This is not a sudden reversal. The IPA's previous census, published in January 2025, already carried a heading saying the number of under-25s in the industry continues to decline, with the average employee age rising from 34.6 to 35.2 years. What changed is the rate. A slow decline became a fifth in a single year, in the same year 8 per cent of agencies reported cutting staff as a direct result of AI.

And the entry level is not just shrinking, it is being closed off. The share of agencies employing a graduate trainee, an apprentice or a school-leaver apprentice fell from 56 per cent to 43.4 per cent. Media agencies, at 60.6 per cent, were considerably more likely to employ them than creative agencies.

Now the part that is difficult to explain away.

The same census reports that over 85 per cent of apprenticeship levy funds paid by submitting agencies went unused by those agencies. Creative and other non-media agencies spent 9 per cent of their levy money on apprentice training. Media agencies spent 20.2 per cent. The previous year the IPA put a figure on the same problem, estimating 5.6 million pounds of levy funds going unspent across its members. The two years are worded differently and should be read as two separate statements of one problem rather than as a series.

So the money to train an entry-level intake was already collected, by law, and mostly sat there.

The IPA says this itself. Its director general, commenting on the census, said the steep fall in entry-level roles raises real questions about future capability, particularly as AI reshapes skills and ways of working, and that keeping talent pipelines open, including making far better use of the Apprenticeship Levy, is no longer optional.

This desk's read follows, and the seam between the evidence and the read sits right here.

Not hiring a junior is the easiest decision in the building. Nobody is made redundant. No consultation is required. There is no announcement, no severance line, no difficult conversation, and no name attached to the loss. The entire cost of the choice falls on somebody who does not yet work there and therefore cannot object to it.

That is why the entry level goes first in every squeeze, and it is not evidence of anything about AI on its own. What AI adds is a reason that feels forward-looking rather than defensive. A firm that stops hiring juniors because money is tight is retrenching. A firm that stops hiring juniors because the tools have changed is transforming. The decision is identical and only one version is comfortable to say out loud.

One further thing sits in the same document and is worth naming carefully. Among agencies reporting ethnicity data, entry level is the most ethnically diverse tier in the industry: 45.5 per cent of trainees and apprentices are from a non-white background, against 12.7 per cent at C-suite level. Overall representation rose again this year, to 25.5 per cent.

Both things are true at once, and the census does not join them. This desk will: the tier carrying the industry's diversity gains into senior roles a decade from now is the tier being cut hardest. That is our inference and not the IPA's finding, and it is about the future rather than the present. Nothing in this data says diversity is falling.

We reported on 29 July that apprenticeship starts across the UK were up 8.7 per cent while starts by under-19s fell. This is the same mechanism seen from the employer's side, in one sector, with the money and the intention both on the record.

The useful thing to ask an employer is not whether they use AI. It is how many people under twenty-five they hired last year, and how much of their levy they spent.