PwC finds AI-skilled roles offer 56% premium and automatable jobs continue to grow across sectors
Workers in AI-exposed industries are seeing wage growth twice as fast as those in less exposed sectors, and job numbers continue to rise—even in roles considered highly automatable—according to the 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer released by PwC.
As per PwC’s analysis of nearly a billion job postings and thousands of company financial reports across six continents, wages increased 16.7 percent in the most AI-exposed industries compared to 7.9 percent in the least exposed ones.
In Canada, where sectors like financial services and software publishing are highly AI-exposed, this pattern signals wage pressure and compensation restructuring in core knowledge-economy rolesreport.
According to the report, roles requiring AI skills now offer a 56 percent wage premium on average, up from 25 percent the previous year.
Demand for AI-capable workers continues to climb, with job postings for such roles increasing by 7.5 percent in the past year, even as overall job ads fell by 11.3 percentreport.
Productivity has surged in sectors most exposed to AI, nearly quadrupling from 7 percent (2018–2022) to 27 percent (2018–2024), according to PwC.
In contrast, productivity declined in the least exposed industries—from 10 percent to 9 percent over the same period.
Revenue per employee has grown three times faster in industries best positioned to leverage AI, suggesting a shift in how value creation is being measured.
Job numbers are also rising in AI-exposed occupations.
According to PwC, while jobs in less exposed occupations grew by 65 percent from 2019 to 2024, those in more exposed ones still grew by 38 percent.
The analysis found consistent job growth across both automatable and augmentable roles, with the strongest increases in industries such as healthcare, education, and transportation.
As reported by PwC, skills disruption is happening fastest in automatable roles.
Skills sought by employers in AI-exposed jobs are changing 66 percent faster than in less exposed ones, up from 25 percent last year.
Formal education is becoming less central; the share of AI-augmented jobs requiring a degree dropped from 66 percent in 2019 to 59 percent in 2024, while in automatable jobs, it fell from 53 percent to 44 percent.
Carol Stubbings, global chief commercial officer at PwC, stated that the research shows the power of AI to deliver for businesses is already being realised.
She added that we are only at the start of the transition.
Pete Brown, PwC’s Global Workforce Leader, added that “even if [employers] 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.”
According to PwC’s findings, in every country studied, more women than men hold AI-exposed roles.
While this opens access to evolving, higher-value work, it also heightens the urgency for skill development, as employer demand in these jobs is shifting rapidly.
The report outlines five recommendations for businesses: use AI for enterprise-wide transformation, treat AI as a growth—not just efficiency—strategy, prioritise Agentic AI, enable workforce reskilling, and build trust through governance and responsible AI deployment.
