Overview

Established in 2026, the First Mile Sandbox is an initiative of the World Economic Forum designed to strengthen pathways from education into employment as artificial intelligence (AI), technological change, and other economic forces reshape entry-level jobs. The initiative brings together employers, universities, policymakers, and other stakeholders to experiment with new approaches to preparing individuals for the workforce and developing the next generation of talent.

The initiative recognizes a growing disconnect between how students and early-career workers acquire skills and experience and how employers are redesigning jobs and hiring practices. AI creates both opportunities and challenges: while it can increase productivity and transform workplace tasks, it may also reduce opportunities for individuals to gain the foundational experiences traditionally associated with entry-level positions. The initiative works to address these challenges through practical experimentation, collaborative partnerships, and the identification of effective approaches that can be expanded across industries and geographic regions.

Activities focus on three interconnected approaches:

• Anticipate
  • Examine emerging changes in entry-level employment and workforce requirements.
  • Through an executive foresight series, participating organizations explore how AI, industry transformation, demographic changes, and other developments may affect early-career opportunities and future talent needs.
• Pilot
  • Develop, share, and test innovative approaches to strengthening entry-level talent readiness.
  • Encourages employers, universities, and other organizations to collaborate on new partnership models, redesign early-career pathways, and experiment with approaches that better connect education and workplace requirements.
• Scale
  • Identify and expand promising practices.
  • The initiative seeks to connect individual pilot projects to a common framework for learning across industries and geographic regions, enabling participants to exchange evidence, identify transferable approaches, and accelerate adoption of effective workforce development strategies.

The Sandbox is supporting several stakeholder groups:

• For employers, it offers opportunities to strengthen recruitment, improve entry-level productivity, and develop sustainable talent pipelines.
• For education and training institutions, it offers opportunities to improve graduate employment outcomes and strengthen employer relationships.
• For governments and other stakeholders, it provides a collaborative approach to addressing youth employment challenges and improving workforce readiness.

An emerging area of activity involves the built environment and infrastructure sectors, where employers face difficulties attracting new workers while demand for technical, digital, and other emerging skills continues to evolve. The World Economic Forum is working with industry communities to explore how these sectors can create more effective pathways for younger workers.

Background

The First Mile Sandbox emerged in 2026 in a context of growing international concern about the effects of AI on entry-level employment and the transition from education to work.

In June 2026, the World Economic Forum, in collaboration with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), published Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Entry-Level Work: A Framework for Safeguarding and Reinventing Early Career Pathways. The report identifies four priorities for responding to changes in early-career employment: job access, job design, talent pipelines, and education system alignment.

The First Mile Sandbox provides a mechanism for translating such research findings into practical experimentation through collaboration between employers and education providers.

Initial discussions took place during the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting of the New Champions in June 2026. The Forum subsequently identified the First Mile Sandbox in its 2025–2026 Annual Report as an initiative supporting the redesign of learning-to-earning pathways and entry-level roles affected by artificial intelligence.

The initiative is part of the World Economic Forum's broader work on the future of jobs, education, skills, and workforce transformation. It is connected to the Forum's Reskilling Revolution platform, which promotes collaboration to improve education, skills development, and economic opportunities worldwide.

Partners / Funders

The First Mile Sandbox is led by the World Economic Forum through its Centre for the New Economy and Society. The initiative brings together employers, universities and other education institutions, government representatives, philanthropies, and workforce development stakeholders. These organizations are invited to participate in identifying workforce challenges, designing pilot projects, and sharing approaches that can be adapted or scaled across sectors and geographic regions.

Resources

World Economic Forum. (n.d.). The First Mile Sandbox. Reskilling Revolution. https://initiatives.weforum.org/reskilling-revolution/first-mile-sandbox

World Economic Forum. (2026, June 22). Artificial intelligence and the future of entry-level work: A framework for safeguarding and reinventing early career pathways. https://www.weforum.org/publications/artificial-intelligence-and-the-future-of-entry-level-work-a-framework-for-safeguarding-and-reinventing-early-career-pathways

World Economic Forum. (2026, August 12). How to address the entry-level talent gap in the built environment and infrastructure sector. https://www.weforum.org/stories/jobs-and-the-future-of-work/talent-gap-built-environment-infrastructure-industry

World Economic Forum. (2026). Initiatives by centre. In Annual report 2025–2026. https://www.weforum.org/publications/annual-report-2025-2026/initiatives-by-centre