ExclusiveThe Future Career of Young Workers is...Pokémon Cards?

By day, Keith works with financial accounts. After work, he searches for something very different — Pokémon cards. The accountant earns around $110,000 a year. But buying and reselling cards and other sought-after products reportedly brings him another $10,000. How could this be real? Welcome to News Planet. I'm your host, Kathleen Lee. Keith's resale business did not begin with the latest Pokémon boom. He has been reselling products for more than a decade. He searches online, checks stores, follows trends, and watches what people around him are buying. For a collector, a card might complete a favorite set. For a reseller, it is inventory. Something to buy at one price and sell at another. Keith reportedly uses paid online communities and extensive research to spot opportunities. This is not simply finding an old binder and discovering a fortune. it is a small trading business. Now place that business beside what researchers are finding about younger and newer workers. An August update from Stanford's Digital Economy Lab examined payroll data covering millions of American workers through June 2026. For workers aged 22 to 25 in highly AI-exposed occupations, employment stood about 19% below where it would have been had it kept pace with their less exposed peers. That is a concerning gap. Researchers found the change operated mainly through reduced hiring. Basically, it means that many people's first jobs never open. Thus, people have to find additional income in markets far outside a conventional office, resorting to something that sounds like a child's dream job. A job application requires someone else to offer you a position. The fate of your career falls in someone else's hands. Reselling offers a different proposition, identify demand, secure a product, and find a buyer. Essentially, you're your own boss. The only hassle is tracking online communities, researching demand, and competing with other buyers, which is where many people rely on AI. That's the irony here. Technology may be changing the jobs people can enter, but it is also changing the competition inside their alternative income streams. There is ingenuity in turning knowledge of a hobby into income. But the larger question is about opportunity. If employers hire fewer beginners, where will those beginners gain the experience employers eventually demand? A resale business may offer useful experience. It should not have to substitute for an entire missing first rung on the career ladder. But this is the sad and inevitable reality of the rise of AI. For a child, a rare Pokemon card might be a treasure. For a current adult, it might be life-saving money and their only source of income. The question is whether this is the only way to make a living from now on. Only time will tell. That's all we have today for News Planet. Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.