AI-Exposed Roles Refocus on Human Skills

Jobs which have changed due to AI have refocused on human skills to a higher degree than those which have not. This is the result of a survey of one million job ads across 16 sectors in 27 countries carried out for the PwC Global AI Jobs Barometer.

The researchers calculated the EPOCH score of new task descriptions from 2025 in jobs affected and not affected by AI, measuring how much jobs listings mentioned human skills like empathy, presence, opinion, creativity and vision. Jobs affected by AI reached a score at times almost twice as high as non-AI-exposed jobs. This was true both for jobs in which a higher-level task was the one subject to automation as well as those in which this applied to a lower-level task.

The report gives the examples of an inventory clerk and a recruiter for either scenario. For the clerk, the higher-level task of managing inventory might have been automated fully or to some degree, while the lower-level task of moving stock remains in human hands. PwC calls this scenario a democratization of a job. In case of the recruiter, it is more likely that lower-level tasks have been automated, in this case the screening of CVs, for example. More expert tasks remain non-automated, which could refer to tasks like in-person interviews or contract negotiations. This is called a professionalization of a job.

PwC reports that around a quarter of the job postings they reviewed were in non-AI-affected jobs and professionalized jobs each, with the other half categorized as democratized. The company expects professionalized jobs to become more complex but also more lucrative, while democratized jobs could suffer in terms of their number but also their remuneration. The reports draws a parallel to past technological innovations like better computer capabilities, which have had a similar effect on jobs and task descriptions. However, for both democratized and professionalized tasks, workers who can focus on their human skills are expected to have a better time in the job market.