The wage premium for AI-skilled workers in the UK tripled in a single year, hitting 34.2% in 2025 – up from 11% in 2024 – as demand for specialists rebounded sharply after a slowdown, according to PwC’s 2026 AI Jobs Barometer.
The report, released on Monday, analysed more than one billion job ads across six continents. It reveals UK job postings requiring specialist AI skills reached 179,954 in 2025, up from roughly 112,000 in 2024, returning to levels last seen in 2022.
Which UK sectors are hiring most for AI skills?
The barometer shows hiring growth is concentrated in a handful of sectors. Technology, media and telecoms reported the highest share of AI-related job hires (10%), followed by financial services (8%) and professional services (4%).
Jobs requiring specific AI skills are also increasing. Growing roughly eight times faster than the total jobs market globally – 69% compared to 9% – the number of AI jobs worldwide is now almost twice what it was in 2024.
Looking beneath those headline figures, organisations with the strongest AI-related growth aren’t just hiring more AI specialists – they’re growing headcount faster across the board. PwC found that companies most able to use AI grew headcount by 52% compared with 2018 levels, against 36% for those least able to do so. Put simply, the notion that AI adoption naturally reduces overall hiring isn’t present in the data.
How much more do AI-skilled workers earn in the UK?
The UK’s 34.2% sits below the global average wage premium of 62%, which the report calculated across 27 countries. Twelve months ago, the UK figure stood at 11%.
Globally, companies making the most use of AI grew their productivity by 34% between 2018 and 2025, compared to 24% for those using it least. Among the top 20% of the most AI-embedded organisations, average labour productivity growth hit 163% – nearly five times higher than that wider group.
For PwC’s Chief Technology and Innovation Officer Claire Reid, that gap reflects what it takes to capture those gains: “The experimentation phase is over and businesses want to scale and embed the technology properly.”
Which skills are employers paying a premium for as AI spreads?
The barometer also examines how AI adoption is reshaping the skills employers need most. The more AI is embedded in a role, the faster its skill requirements change – and the more those requirements shift toward capabilities that AI can’t replicate. The report found that jobs with the greatest AI exposure required an average of 224 new skills over the period studied, compared to 101 for the least exposed.
According to PwC, 2.2% of UK jobs formally required AI skills last year – but that only captures roles where AI proficiency appears explicitly in the job ad. AI is already embedded in a far larger share of the workforce without those roles advertising for it. In those jobs, it’s handling the routine tasks. What employers are increasingly paying a premium to secure is what remains: the judgement, creativity and interpersonal ability that AI can’t replicate.
What does a two-track labour market mean for UK employers?
That divide is already reshaping the labour market into two distinct tracks. PwC describes a split between “professionalised” roles – where AI makes skilled workers significantly more productive – and “democratised” ones, where AI makes the role itself easier for non-experts to do. Professionalised roles are growing at 39%, against 17% for democratised ones – and professionalised roles are where demand for talent is growing fastest.
The divide is already visible in how workers and businesses experience AI. Separate research by Employment Hero found that 44% of UK employees use AI tools in their jobs – 28% weekly, 9% daily. Those using AI at least weekly are 23% more likely to say they’re making an impact at work. Among business leaders, AI tools are already the number-one priority for improving productivity over the next 12 months, though just over half of businesses have integrated AI to at least a moderate degree – even as one in five small to medium enterprises (SMEs) in the UK say they intend to use more contractors and temporary staff in response to the Employment Rights Act. (Work That Works, Employment Hero commissioned research with QuestionPro, March 2025.)
The challenge of closing that gap falls disproportionately on small businesses. Last week’s AI Adoption Summit – the Government’s first event of its kind – announced more than £200 million in investment to drive AI uptake across the economy, with a target of giving 10 million workers key AI skills by 2030, as well as a campaign to reach at least 2 million SME employees within the same period. Research included alongside the announcement found that small businesses are 45% less likely to adopt AI than larger companies, largely due to limited in-house expertise.
For UK employers yet to embed AI, PwC’s data suggests the window to catch up is narrowing.
