AI was making workers more valuable, productive and able to command higher wage premiums, with job numbers seen rising even in roles considered most automatable, according to PwC's 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer report, released on Tuesday.
The report was based on analysis of close to a billion job ads from six continents.
Since GenAI's proliferation in 2022, productivity growth nearly quadrupled in industries most exposed to AI, such as financial services or software publishing, rising from 7 percent in 2018-2022 period to 27 percent in 2022-2024, the report said.
In contrast, the rate of productivity growth in industries least exposed to AI, such as mining or hospitality, declined from 10 percent to 9 percent over the same period, the report added.
2024 data showed that the most AI-exposed industries were seeing three times higher growth in revenue per employee than the least exposed.
Job numbers were rising in virtually every type of AI-exposed occupation, even those highly automatable, such as financial services.
Contrary to some expectations, the data from the report did not show job or wage destruction from AI.
Growing employment
While occupations with lower exposure to AI saw strong job growth at 65 percent in recent years, growth remained robust even in more exposed occupations, at 38 percent.
Within more exposed occupations, the report further divided jobs into 'automated', meaning the job contained some tasks that AI could carry out, and 'augmented', meaning where AI helped a human do their job better.
Across both classifications between 2019 and 2024, job numbers were growing in every industry analysed, although augmented jobs were generally growing faster.
Wages were also growing twice as fast in industries more exposed to AI versus less exposed, the report said, with wages rising in both automatable and augmentable jobs.
Jobs which required AI skills offered a wage premium over similar roles that did not require AI skills in every industry analysed, the report said, with the average premium hitting 56 percent, up from 25 percent last year.
Jobs that required such AI skills also continued to grow faster than all jobs, rising 7.5 percent from last year, even as total job postings fell 11.3 percent, the report added.
"In contrast to worries that AI could cause sharp reductions in the number of jobs available – this year's findings show jobs are growing in virtually every type of AI-exposed occupation, including highly automatable ones," said Joe Atkinson, Global Chief AI Officer at PwC.
‘AI’s rapid advance’
While the picture on productivity, wages and jobs was broadly positive, the report highlighted the need for workers and businesses to adapt to a much faster pace of change.
The skills sought by employers were changing 66 percent faster in occupations most exposed to AI, up from 25 percent last year.
Employer demand for formal degrees was declining for all jobs, the report said, but especially quickly for AI-exposed jobs.
The percentage of jobs AI augmented that required a degree fell 7 percentage points between 2019 and 2024, from 66 percent to 59 percent, and 9 percentage points—53 percent to 44 percent—for jobs AI automated.
The report's findings also showed that AI's impact on women and men may be unequal. In every country analysed, more women than men were in AI-exposed roles, suggesting the skills pressure facing women would be higher.
"AI's rapid advance is not just re-shaping industries, but fundamentally altering the workforce and the skills required," Pete Brown, Global Workforce Leader, PwC, said.
"This is not a situation that employers can easily buy their way out of. Even if they can pay the premium required to attract talent with AI skills, those skills can quickly become out of date without investment in the systems to help the workforce learn."
