Significance of Job Creation

New! We analyzed a billion job postings globally, and the results may surprise you: job numbers and wages are rising. Let’s dive in. For the second year running, the 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer from PwC shows that productivity and wages are not just rising, they’re accelerating, even in roles that are most amenable to automation. Our research spans six continents and includes data from 24 countries and territories. 💭 100% of industries are expanding their usage of AI (even industries less obviously exposed to AI such as mining and construction) 📊 Since 2022 when awareness of AI's power surged, productivity growth in industries best positioned to adopt AI has nearly quadrupled (while falling slightly in industries least exposed to AI) 3️⃣ Industries most able to use AI have 3x higher growth in revenue generated by each employee  🪙 Workers with AI skills command a 56% wage premium (up from 25% last year) ⚒️ Skills sought by employers are changing 66% faster in occupations most exposed to AI (like financial analyst) versus least exposed (like physical therapist) – up from 25% last year . AI continues to act as an amplifier of human expertise — not a replacement for it, despite what the headlines might suggest. The prime example being that job growth is occurring even in roles where "automation" is playing the biggest role (like customer service and software engineering). Job cuts and doomerism make headlines, but job creation takes longer to materialize and to be recognized. It’s the difference between weather and climate, and why we call this report a "barometer". As the shifting sands of the past two years begin to settle into clearer patterns, there’s never been a better time to dive in, get hands-on, and lead your teams through this transformation. Link to the full report below.

The biggest mistake in thinking about the impact of AI on jobs is to imagine the world as doing exactly what it does today, but with AI automating away some of our work. In practice, what happens is every company gets a capability expansion, which then leads to downstream positive gains in jobs as a result. You can see how this will show up meaningfully just by taking a look at the historical gap between small and large companies. It’s traditionally been the case that only the largest companies have access to all the specialization necessary to solve most problems that come up. They have the engineers to stay ahead on features, various marketing functions to reach customers in more ways, supply chain teams, compliance teams and lawyers to help with regulations, and so on. Any other company in the world just starting out has none of this. This not only is an immediate barrier to starting a new company or trying out a new idea, it’s an inevitable point of friction in being able to grow rapidly as a small company. The impact of AI Agents is that every company in the world will eventually have the kind of resources that only the world’s largest companies have today. As a result, small companies will be able to grow way faster or generally do more. A new small business can generate the marketing campaigns, do market research, ship features, do outbound selling, or handle customer support in ways that would have been cost prohibitive before. In some cases they would hire for these functions, but most of the time the work just never gets done to the level that is desirable, or never gets done at all. And as a consequence of this growth, these smaller firms will naturally need to keep hiring people to do the work that AI can’t do in all the surrounding functions. Which is precisely where you’ll see AI be a driver of net job growth.

While much AI and jobs coverage focuses on disappearing roles, it's refreshing to see The NYTimes Magazine highlight job creation in line with The World Economic Forum's prediction of 78 million jobs AI will create. With the widely accepted estimations that for every job killed by AI, three or four will be created, we come to this: 78 million is the WEF’s net number, bringing us to 100 million or more, gross. What types of jobs will be sought after? 💼 Trainers, says the WEF, “are the people developing AI: engineers and scientists working on the large language models (LLMs) on which generative AI tools such as ChatGPT depend.” Additionally, AI development involves more than just programmers; demand engineers, predicts the WEF’s Jobs of Tomorrow 2024 report. 💼 Explainers - Trainers work behind the scenes while explainers interact with users to help them understand and use AI. They design interfaces for smooth interactions and can be considered "user experience (UX) designers," says the Forum. 💼 Sustainers will ensure optimal AI use by focusing on three functions: (1) Content creators will exercise prompt engineering, (2) Data curators will ensure LLMs receive high-quality data, and (3) Ethics and governance specialists will ensure LLMs operate without bias, harm, or unethical behavior, rigorously testing before public release. This may lead to the emergence of AI safety and regulatory officers. This is what we received from the WEF in January 2024. When reassessed today, it proves to be quite insightful, providing us with strong guidance for the decisions we have no choice but to make. The article in The New York Times Magazine lists 22 New Ones It Could Give You. https://archive.is/iR912 [Link to article] #AI #Jobs #Hiring