• Workers in AI-exposed roles may need to demonstrate or acquire new skills to stay relevant in a jobs market that is fast-evolving.
• Workers who build the skills to harness AI will be more valuable than ever and bring a bright future for companies.

Demand for jobs that are difficult for AI to do, such as sports coaching or personal care, dam construction or waste collection, are booming while skills required to build AI systems, such as machine learning interference or natural language programming, are also flourishing.

According to PwC’s 2024 AI Jobs Barometer, examining half a billion job ads from 15 countries to uncover AI’s impact, showed that  demand for skills that can be done with AI, such as coding in Javascript and demand for Regression Analysis, a type of analysis AI can help to perform, are declining fast.

 “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,” the report said.

AI makes human labour more valuable

PWC’s analysis suggest that AI’s effect on jobs may be similar to that of the internal combustion engine in the 20th century which reduced numbers of some jobs (such as horse trader) while at the same time creating far more jobs than it displaced (from truck driver to road engineer to traffic police).

There is no going back to yesterday’s jobs market, but – if carefully managed – the AI revolution could bring a bright future for workers and companies.

 “AI makes human labour more relevant and valuable, opening up new opportunities for people to develop new skills and enter new roles. AI will create new jobs for people that we haven’t yet begun to imagine. Many of the fastest-growing jobs of today – from cloud engineer to digital interface designer – didn’t exist 10 or 20 years ago and have been generated by technology,” Pete Brown, Global Workforce Leader, PwC UK, said.

Like a spreadsheet or a saw, he said that AI is a tool that makes people more powerful and capable. Workers who build the skills to harness AI will be more valuable than ever.

Data suggests that AI is already making workers much more productive. Sectors that are especially exposed to AI are experiencing nearly five times higher growth in labour productivity.

AI can help overcome labour shortages

In AI-exposed occupations from teaching to IT, jobs are still growing, but 27 per cent more slowly on average. This could be good news for many nations facing shrinking working age populations and vast unmet needs for labour in many sectors. AI can help to overcome labour shortages that could put a brake on economic growth.

“AI provides much more than efficiency gains. AI offers fundamentally new ways of creating value. We don’t have enough software developers, doctors, or scientists to deliver all the code, healthcare, and scientific breakthroughs the world needs. There is a nearly limitless demand for many things if we can improve our ability to deliver them,” Scott Likens, Global AI and Innovation Technology Leader, PwC US, said.

Workers in AI-exposed roles may need to demonstrate or acquire new skills to stay relevant in a jobs market that is fast-evolving. 

Many who predict AI will cause a sharp decline in the total number of jobs are asking the wrong question. 

Far from heralding the end of jobs, AI signals the start of a new era in which workers can be more productive and valuable than ever.

“Growth in jobs demanding AI specialist skills has outpaced growth in all jobs since 2016. What’s more, these jobs carry up to a 25 per cent wage premium on average, underlining the value of these skills to companies,” the report said.

What can companies do?

• Business leaders can think beyond using AI to do things the way they have been done in the past and instead use AI to generate new ways to create value.
• While AI can help to make existing processes more efficient, companies can realise even more benefit from AI by using it to reinvent business models or pioneer new product lines.
• Thinking inventively about how to use AI helps the company to be the disruptor rather than the disrupted, and it helps to create new opportunities for people.
• Business leaders should view AI as a complement to people that is best used with human oversight. Companies can support employees to make the most of AI by offering training and helping them see how AI empowers them (and can even make their jobs more enjoyable by freeing them to work more autonomously and be more confident in their roles).
• Firms can consider hiring on the basis of candidates’ skills rather than focusing solely on their degrees, job history, or previous job titles. This helps firms find the workers they need, and it helps workers more readily adapt to a fast-changing jobs market.

What employees can do?

• Workers, for their part, should embrace AI, experimenting with it and seeking ways it can complement and enable them in their work.
•  Workers should build the skills to be sought after in an AI age (for example, skills that either complement AI or are hard for AI to do).
• Some workers may need to adapt more than others to succeed in an AI era; for example, some workers may need only a little training to adopt AI tools while other workers may need to move to new occupations which require more extensive retraining or upskilling.
• Workers, companies, and policymakers share responsibility for helping all workers adapt to an AI era.

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