** This article was NOT AI generated **
PwC analyzed over half a billion job ads from 15 countries to find evidence of AI’s impact worldwide. Some relevant findings:
- AI penetration is accelerating. Growth in AI specialist jobs has outpaced growth in all jobs since 2016. Today, there are seven times as many postings for specialist AI jobs as there were in 2012. Openings for jobs that require specialist AI skills have grown 3.5 times faster than openings for all jobs since 2012.
2. Knowledge work sectors have higher AI penetration. The share of job ads requiring AI skills is higher in professional services, information & communication, and financial services. Financial services has a 2.8x higher share of jobs requiring AI skills vs other sectors, professional services is 3x higher, and information & communication is 5x higher.
3. AI specialist jobs command up to a 25% wage premium on average (In USA). AI’s value to companies is made clear by what is happening with the wages of workers with AI specialist skills. The wage premium varies by occupation when that occupation requires AI specialist skills.
4. AI appears to be driving a productivity revolution. To understand how AI is affecting all jobs, PwC examined jobs and sectors by their levels of ‘AI exposure’ which means the degree to which AI can be used for some tasks. Higher levels of AI exposure appear to be affecting workers’ productivity, numbers of job openings, and the skills that jobs require. The three sectors presented above with higher AI exposure: financial services, IT, and professional services – are seeing nearly 5x faster productivity growth than sectors with lower AI exposure (such as transport, manufacturing and construction). Even though correlation does not imply causation, this is an interesting insight.
5. AI is helping to ease labor shortages. In AI-exposed occupations such as customer services and IT – where labor shortages are common – jobs are still growing, but 27% more slowly on average. The data suggests that AI does not herald an era of job losses but rather more gradual jobs growth, helping to enable companies to find the workers they need.
6. Workers need to build new skills. The skills required by employers in AI-exposed occupations are changing fast. Old skills are disappearing from job ads – and new skills are appearing – 25% faster than in roles less exposed to AI. Some of the skills rising fastest in demand are those which cannot easily be performed by AI. The AI transformation is clear to see in categories like Information Technology where demand for AI-related skills like ‘AI/Machine Learning Inference’ is flourishing, while demand for some skills that may be more readily replaced by AI (such as coding in Javascript) is falling.
Perhaps the most interesting insight from this report is the conclusion that AI is redefining what it means to be a financial analyst, a software coder, a customer service agent (and many more roles), opening up whole new possibilities for workers to deliver impact. Workers who learn to harness AI are likely to have bright futures in which they can generate greater value and could consequently have greater bargaining power for wages – all within a context of rising societal prosperity.
What to do next:
Business Leaders:
- Embrace, experiment, and create new uses of AI
- Use AI to generate new ways to create value: reinvent business models or pioneer new product lines
- View AI as a powerful tool best used with human oversight (human + AI collaboration)
- Offer AI training to all employees
- Hire on the basis of skills vs degrees
Workers:
- Embrace AI, experiment with it, and seek ways for AI to complement the work they do
- Build skills: either skills in areas that are hard for AI to do, or skills that complement AI
You can read the full report at pwc.com/aijobsbarometer
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