You Can Get Paid $18,000 More a Year By Adding AI Skills to Your Resume, According to a New Study Employers are emphasizing AI skills — and are willing to pay a lot more if you have them.
By Sherin Shibu Edited by Melissa Malamut
Key Takeaways
- A new study found that jobs requiring AI skills paid 28% more a year, or around $18,000.
- The most common AI skill employers asked for was knowing how to use ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot.
- Non-technical roles have seen demand for AI skills increase by 800% since November 2022.
It pays to have AI skills — nearly $20,000 more per year on average.
A recent study conducted by the job insight website LightCast analyzed over a billion job postings and found that employers are not only looking for workers with AI skills — they are also paying them more.
"Job postings are increasingly emphasizing AI skills, and there are signals that employers are willing to pay premium salaries for them," LightCast's Head of Global Research Elena Magrini told CNBC.
Related: Google Reportedly Told Its Staff to Use AI More or Risk Falling Behind: 'It Seems Like a No-Brainer'
The study found that job postings that asked for AI skills paid 28% more, or around $18,000, than jobs that didn't require AI. Jobs requiring two or more AI skills paid 43% more.
The roles with the highest differences in pay between workers with AI skills and those without were in the fields of customer support, sales, and manufacturing.
There are now over 300 possible AI skills, according to LightCast, from generative AI to AI ethics to autonomous driving and robotics. But the most common AI skills employers requested were two of the most mainstream — ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot.
In a surprising twist, non-technical sectors demanded AI skills more than technical ones, according to LightCast's report. Since November 2022, when ChatGPT launched, demand for generative AI skills shot up by 800% for non-technical roles.
A recent report from The Wall Street Journal found that entry-level college graduates are getting six- or seven-figure salaries right out of school because of their proficiency with AI. Databricks, a data analytics firm, is planning to hire triple the number of recent graduates this year compared to last year because of these young workers' ability to use AI, the company told The Journal.
While learning AI may give workers a boost in salary negotiations, the technology also has the potential to replace entry-level employees. A Stanford University study released last week found that AI-impacted jobs, like software developers, customer service representatives, and accountants, saw employment for workers ages 22 to 25 decline by 13% over the past three years.
"There's definitely evidence that AI is beginning to have a big effect," the study's first author and Stanford Professor Erik Brynjolfsson told Axios about the report.
