AI is creating a 'two-track' labor market, with better pay for human-intensive skills

AI is creating a 'two-track' labor market, with jobs requiring more human-intensive skills seeing better pay and greater growth than those where AI makes the role easier for non-experts.

PwC's 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer has found that 'professionalized' roles – such as radiologists or recruiters – are seeing twice the growth in available jobs and 42% faster salary growth than those categorized as 'democratized', such as IT service managers or medical secretaries.

This applies even to entry-level jobs, where AI appears to be increasing demand for more 'senior' skills from junior workers.

Based on 2.4 million entry-level jobs analyzed in the US, the roles most exposed to AI are now seven times more likely to require traditionally senior-level 'human-intensive' skills like leadership, creativity, or face-to-face interactions – and job openings for these 'seniorized' entry-level roles have grown 35% since 2019, while other entry-level roles shrank by 10%.

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"Across the global economy, we're beginning to see a new divide emerge between different models for talent and value creation," said Joe Atkinson, PwC's global chief AI officer.

"The companies seeing the greatest returns on AI are using it to amplify human expertise, accelerate innovation, and create entirely new sources of value. As a result, they are pulling further ahead on productivity and growth than companies that focus primarily on automation."

The report also found that the gap between companies most and least exposed to AI is widening. Companies in the most AI-exposed sectors recorded 34% productivity growth between 2018 and 2025, compared with just 24% for the companies least able to use AI.

Even within this group, a pronounced 'super-star' effect is emerging, with the top 20% of the most AI-exposed companies achieving average labor productivity growth of 163% – nearly five times higher than the most AI-exposed companies overall.

And perhaps most surprisingly, said PwC, headcount at the most AI-exposed companies is growing more than at the least AI-exposed companies – 52%, compared with 36%.

The average wage premium for workers with AI skills continued to grow, hitting 62%, up from 57% last year. But it varies by industry, reaching as much as 118% in some sectors, such as consumer markets, but only 16% in government and public sector work.

Jobs requiring specific AI skills – such as prompt engineering or machine learning – have also soared, growing roughly eight times as fast as the overall jobs market. The number of AI jobs is almost twice as high as in 2024, with growth in AI jobs outpacing all jobs since 2015.

Sectors including technology, media and telecommunications, and professional services saw the highest share in AI job growth, with health at the lowest end.

"The traditional relationship between experience and expertise is changing," said Pete Brown, PwC's global workforce leader.

"AI is removing some of the routine work that once acted as an apprenticeship, while increasing demand for judgement, leadership, and adaptability much earlier in careers. Organizations need to rethink how they develop talent if they want people to thrive in this new environment."

The findings may represent a backlash as organizations find that using AI to eliminate entry-level jobs isn't always a great idea.

With AI taking over repetitive and knowledge-based tasks, it can be hard to find candidates with the necessary skills for higher steps on the ladder.

In a survey late last year by Deel, just under seven-in-ten organizations said there are now fewer on-the-job development opportunities for junior employees, while 71% said it was getting harder to recruit and train future leaders because of the loss of entry-level learning pathways.