PwC study finds AI splits job market into two tracks, rewarding human skills

Artificial intelligence is dividing the global labour market into two distinct groups, with companies that use AI to enhance human expertise pulling ahead of those that deploy it mainly to cut costs. That is the central finding of the PwC 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer, which analysed more than one billion job advertisements across 27 countries and territories.

The report identifies two categories of AI-affected roles. “Professionalised” roles, such as radiologists and recruiters, are those where AI automates routine tasks and places greater emphasis on human judgement and expertise. “Democratised” roles, such as IT service managers and medical secretaries, are those where AI simply makes the work easier for non-experts. Professionalised roles are growing at twice the rate of democratised ones and are seeing salary growth 42% faster.

AI-exposed companies hire more, not less

Perhaps counter-intuitively, greater AI exposure correlates with faster hiring. Companies most exposed to AI grew their headcount by 52% from 2018 levels, compared with 36% for the least-exposed firms. The top 20% of AI-exposed companies achieved labour productivity gains of 163% relative to 2018, nearly five times the average for AI-exposed companies overall.

Jobs requiring specific AI skills, such as prompt engineering or machine learning, grew 69% in 2025, roughly eight times faster than the overall job market at 9%. The average wage premium for AI skills rose to 62%, up from 57% the previous year. That premium reaches as high as 118% in consumer markets, but sits at just 16% in government and public sector roles.

Entry-level roles demand senior skills earlier

The shift is also reshaping early careers. Based on 2.4 million US entry-level job postings, AI-exposed entry-level roles are now seven times more likely to require traditionally senior skills such as leadership, creativity and face-to-face interaction. These roles grew 35% since 2019, while other entry-level positions shrank by 10%.

“AI is removing some of the routine work that once acted as an apprenticeship,” said Pete Brown, PwC’s global workforce leader, “while increasing demand for judgement, leadership and adaptability much earlier in careers.”

Joe Atkinson, PwC’s global chief AI officer, added that companies seeing the greatest returns are “using AI to amplify human expertise, accelerate innovation and create entirely new sources of value.”

Sources

• AI reshapes global labour market into two distinct paths, rewarding human skills: PwC 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer – PwC
• AI Is Splitting the Job Market in Two, PwC Study Shows – Bloomberg