AI-Skilled Workers Make 60 Percent More Across Sectors

PwC's Global AI Jobs Barometer has found that AI-skilled workers earn 62 percent more across the globe than their non-AI-skilled counterparts. The analysis looked at data across one million job ads in 16 different sectors and 27 countries and found that in consumer market jobs, differences were especially stark, with roles requiring AI skills paying 118 percent more than those which don't.

Other high pay gaps could be observed in the areas of technology, telecoms and media (+84 percent earnings for AI-skilled employees), energy, utilities and resources (+75 percent) as well as manufacturing (+73 percent). Below average gains were calculated for the public sector, where (government) employees only earned 16 percent more if they had AI skills. In the health industries, this number stood at 37 percent.

The report also found that the hiring of AI specialists has been rising sharply. While in 2012, 1 percent of jobs posted were for AI specialists, this more than doubled and stood at above 2 percent in 2025. The biggest share of AI jobs was listed in the area of tech, media and telecoms at 11.4 percent of all job listings. Hiring was up in all sectors, with shares of AI jobs reaching between 2 percent and almost 6 percent for the other sectors included in the chart. The exception was the healthcare sector with just around 1 percent of jobs posted having an AI component.