Consulting Pyramid Disrupted

Top strategy and Big‑Four consultancies have frozen starting salaries for multiple years and are cutting graduate recruitment as generative AI automates routine analyst tasks. The classic pyramid model that depends on large cohorts of junior hires to produce labor arbitrage is being restructured now, not gradually. — If consulting pipelines shrink, this will alter early‑career elite wage trajectories, MBA and undergraduate recruitment markets, and the socio‑economic ladder that channels talented graduates into business and government influence.