Revolut mandates office time as entry hiring slips

entry-level hiring – Revolut is telling interns and recent-graduate program participants they must work in the office at least three days a week starting in 2027, citing the value of in-person learning. The move lands amid a tougher entry-level jobs picture: since late 2018, colle

On a graduate’s first steps into the job market, the expectation can feel surprisingly old-fashioned: be in the office, watch how it’s done, learn in the gaps between meetings.

That expectation is now hardening at Revolut. The UK fintech said that starting in 2027. interns and participants in a program for recent grads will be expected to work in the office at least three days a week. Revolut will continue to allow other employees to choose whether to work remotely or in person.

The company frames the decision as more than a staffing preference. “You don’t just learn from your manager telling you what to do. You actually observe how other people conduct their work,” said Queenie Li, Revolut’s head of talent programs.

It’s a message labor economists and employment researchers have been circling for years: early-career workers often benefit from in-person mentorship and informal learning. Yet the broader job market—especially for college graduates in their early to mid-20s—has become harder to read. and harder to step into.

For decades, those graduates typically had a lower unemployment rate than the overall workforce. That changed. Since late 2018, these workers have often faced a higher jobless rate than the workforce as a whole, according to the New York Federal Reserve.

The question now is what’s driving the shift—and whether the answer points to remote work, AI, or something else entirely.

Research that homes in on remote work has found a timing that matters. Peter John Lambert. a postdoctoral research fellow at the London School of Economics and the University of Warwick. and Yannick Schindler of the UK’s Ellison Institute of Technology examined hiring and job-listing data across several countries. including the US. comparing periods before and after the arrival of ChatGPT and the pandemic-driven shift to remote work. They found that the share of entry-level hires fell by as much as 29% in recent years. while hiring for senior positions rose by more than 5%.

Lambert said remote work is the more likely driver of the drop in the entry-level share of new hires than generative AI. One reason. he said. is that it’s easy to blur the effects because both remote work and AI are associated with desk jobs that can be done from afar. He added that the hiring slowdown began before GenAI tools emerged. when the technology was still too limited to meaningfully affect hiring decisions.

“It’s only when you compare these things jointly that you start to see a stronger relationship between work-from-home than generative AI,” Lambert said.

New York Fed researchers reached a similar conclusion from a different angle. They studied an undisclosed Fortune 500 company and reported that when colleagues are separated. “feedback tapers off dramatically.” They said the loss in feedback is more pronounced for younger workers. who miss out on constructive comments that spur their development.

The trouble is that not everyone who studies remote work is prepared to treat it as the single culprit. Nicholas Bloom. an economics professor at Stanford University. said remote work. AI. pandemic-era learning losses. and a broader hiring slowdown—especially one that has hit tech jobs hard—are all plausible explanations for the weak job market for college graduates. Bloom, however, said the current data can’t determine which factor is driving the trend or by how much.

AI enters the debate from a second, more direct employment angle: whether companies need fewer juniors once AI shows up in the job itself.

Mark Ma. an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Business. found that companies with AI in job titles or job descriptions reduced overall hiring. with the biggest declines in early-career roles. Ma said the results suggest that as firms ramp up spending on AI or hire workers with AI skills. they may need fewer entry-level employees.

“They are getting rid of these junior positions because the junior-level work could be more easily replaced by AI,” Ma said.

Ma also argued the timing doesn’t neatly favor a simple “only now” story. He said that because remote work rates were higher a few years ago than they are now, recent grads should have had a tougher time then than they do today. Yet he said, “the problem is getting worse now.”

At the same time, Ma pointed to a contradiction that complicates the interpretation: firms with more remote job postings increased, rather than reduced, hiring for junior positions overall. “Those firms are actually growing faster, so they need to hire more people,” Ma said.

For employers, the tension is clear. The entry-level pipeline depends on learning—especially the kind that doesn’t come from a handbook. That is why Revolut’s plan leans into the mechanics of mentorship.

For those who do land roles, many say at least some in-person time matters. A 2025 Gallup survey found that only about a quarter of Gen Z workers who could do their jobs remotely wanted to do so full time, compared with about one-third of older generations.

Hybrid work. where workers spend at least part of the time in the office. can be a “happy medium. ” Brad Hershbein. senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, said. He described it as an effective way to ensure early-career workers receive the mentorship they often say they want.

Hershbein also warned that remote work doesn’t always deliver the full learning package. Remote workers—especially early in their careers—may not pick up on all the informal cues that shape productivity unless they’re physically in the office to witness them. “In some cases, they end up being unhappy because they’re just not learning some things,” Hershbein said.

Revolut said that making learning happen was part of the thinking behind its new in-office requirement. Li added that the firm plans to bring on about 500 interns and graduate-program participants in 2027, up from about 300 this year.

The decision underscores the pressure employers feel as entry-level hiring comes under scrutiny from multiple directions—remote work changing feedback loops, AI reshaping what entry roles look like, and broader labor-market weakness pushing firms to rethink how they staff and train.

For graduates hoping to break in, the debate doesn’t just live in papers and spreadsheets. It turns into something as basic as where you sit each week—and whether the moments that teach you arrive often enough to matter.

Revolut interns recent graduates office work remote work hiring entry-level jobs AI hiring ChatGPT unemployment New York Federal Reserve Queenie Li Mark Ma Peter John Lambert Yannick Schindler Nicholas Bloom Brad Hershbein Gallup survey