How common is the use of AI for job applications? According to a new survey from Statista+, very common. Of the 500 adults surveyed in the U.S. in January 2026, 70 percent said they had used artificial intelligence when applying for a job in the past 24 months, while they were 64 percent in the UK. As our infographic shows, AI adoption varies slightly depending on several factors, but seems to have become the norm rather than the exception.
Of all the generations surveyed, Millenials were the most likely to trust an AI tool to help apply for jobs: they were 78 percent in the U.S. and 79 percent in the UK, a few percentage points ahead of other generations. Men were also slightly more likely than women to have used AI for an application in the last two years. The biggest gap identified in the story was between office/desk workers and physical/manual workers in the UK: while 72 percent of the former admitted to using AI in the application process, the latter were only 35 percent. Interestingly, the gap was much less pronounced in the U.S.: 82 percent compared to 72 percent.
While AI seems to have been pretty universally adopted in both the U.S. and the UK to search and apply for work, concerns remain. In both countries, around six out of ten respondants said applicants should be careful to use AI in a way that it can't be identified as such. Of the people who hadn't relied on the technology recently, more than half were worried the use of AI would lead to the loss of the personal human contact during the application process. At the same time, a majority believed that applying for a job would be impossible to navigate in the future without AI.
