AI skills boost wages for some, redefine in-demand jobs – campus technology

Tests

Report: Artificial intelligence skills are boosting wages for some and redefining in-demand jobs

According to PwC’s 2024 Global AI Jobs Barometer 2024, AI is providing a boon to many professions, and AI skills often boost paychecks. The professional services consulting firm analyzed over half a billion job postings to discover the transformative impact of AI on job growth, skills demand, wage increases and productivity across sectors.

It’s a mixed bag, as demand for some jobs in sectors such as IT – particularly software development – has fallen as employers look to automate tasks, while demand for artificial intelligence roles has increased.

Bottom line: In some markets, roles requiring AI skills command an average salary of 25%.

Other findings from the report include:

Sectors with the highest AI penetration are seeing almost five times (4.8x) greater labor productivity growth. Increasing labor productivity can generate economic growth, higher wages and a higher standard of living.
Since 2016, the growth of jobs requiring specialist AI skills has outpaced all jobs (long before ChatGPT brought new attention to AI), with the number of jobs with AI specialists growing 3. 5 times faster than all workstations.
Skills sought by employers are changing 25% faster in jobs that best leverage AI. To remain relevant, workers in these roles will need to acquire or demonstrate new skills.

The finding that workers with specialized AI skills earn significant earnings premiums indicates that their ability to implement AI is highly valuable to companies, PwC said.

“The value of AI to businesses clearly demonstrates what is happening to the wages of workers with specialized AI skills – the very workers who are enabling the AI revolution,” the report said. “As we have seen, since 2016, the growth of jobs requiring specialist AI skills has outpaced the growth of all jobs. Moreover, these positions carry an average salary of up to 25%, highlighting the value of these skills to companies.”

Database designers and administrators are at the top of the premium for open jobs requiring AI skills (53% in the US), while accountants with AI skills only command an 18% premium in the US

**(Click on the image to view it in a larger format.)** Salary supplement for vacancies requiring AI skills by country *(source: PwC).*

Meanwhile, some professions are in lower demand because they are easily susceptible to disruption by artificial intelligence systems.

For example, while demand for artificial intelligence skills such as AI/ML inference has skyrocketed (up 113%), coding assistants such as GitHub Copilot have shaken up the software development field, and even general-purpose AI chatbots such as like ChatGPT, are increasingly used to generate code. For example, this resulted in a 37% drop in demand for JavaScript skills.

**(Click on the image to view it in a larger format.)** The slowest growing skill categories *(source: PwC).*

“Artificial intelligence is redefining being a financial analyst, software developer, customer service agent (and many other roles), opening up entirely new opportunities for employees to make an impact,” PwC said. “Workers who learn to leverage AI are likely to have a bright future in which they can generate greater value and, therefore, greater bargaining power over wages – all in the context of growing social prosperity.”