AI is driving mass layoffs in tech, nevertheless it’s boosting salaries by $18,000 a yr in all places else, research says

The know-how business, the unique epicenter of AI adoption, is now seeing lots of its personal staff displaced by the very improvements they helped create. Employers, racing to combine AI into all the pieces from cloud infrastructure to buyer help, are trimming human headcount in software program engineering, IT help, and administrative capabilities. The rise of AI-powered automation is accelerating layoffs within the tech sector, with impacted staff as excessive as 80,000 in a single rely. Microsoft alone is trimming 15,000 jobs whereas committing $80 billion to new AI investments.

However labor market intelligence agency Lightcast is providing a ray of hope going ahead. Job postings for non-tech roles that require AI abilities are hovering in worth. Lightcast’s new “Past the Buzz” report, primarily based on evaluation of over 1.3 billion job postings, exhibits that these postings provide 28% larger salaries—a mean of practically $18,000 extra per yr. The Lightcast analysis underscores the break up in tech and non-tech hiring: job postings for AI abilities in tech roles stay sturdy, however the proportion of AI jobs inside IT and laptop science has fallen, dropping from 61% in 2019 to only 49% in 2024. This indicators an ongoing contraction of conventional tech roles as AI claims an ever-larger share of the work.

AI demand explodes past tech

Somewhat than stifling workforce prospects, Lightcast’s analysis means that AI is dispersing alternative throughout the broader economic system. Greater than half of all jobs requesting AI abilities in 2024 appeared outdoors the tech sector—a radical reversal from earlier years, when AI was confined to Silicon Valley and laptop science labs. Fields like advertising and marketing, HR, finance, training, manufacturing, and customer support are quickly integrating AI instruments, from generative AI platforms that craft advertising and marketing content material to predictive analytics engines that optimize provide chains and recruitment.

In reality, job postings mentioning generative AI abilities outdoors IT and laptop science have surged an astonishing 800% since 2022, catalyzed by the proliferation of instruments like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and DALL-E. Advertising, design, training, and HR are among the quickest growers in AI adoption—every adapting to new toolkits, workflows, and methods of making worth.

Cole Napper, VP of analysis, innovation, and expertise insights at Lightcast, instructed Fortune in an interview that he was struck by the dearth of a discernible sample for which industries had been most affected by the explosion of AI abilities current in job postings, noting that the humanities come high of the record.

AI abilities are in demand

For the workforce at massive, AI proficiency is rising as considered one of immediately’s most profitable talent investments. Possessing two or extra AI abilities sends paychecks even larger, with a 43% premium on marketed salaries.

In 2024, greater than 66,000 job postings particularly talked about generative AI as a talent, an almost fourfold improve from the prior yr, in keeping with the Lightcast’s 2025 Synthetic Intelligence Index Report. Giant language modeling was the second most typical AI talent, which confirmed up in 19,500 open job posts. Postings itemizing ChatGPT and immediate engineering as abilities ranked third and fourth in frequency, respectively.

Sectors akin to buyer/consumer help, gross sales, and manufacturing reported the most important pay bumps for AI-skilled staff, as firms race to automate routine capabilities and leverage AI for aggressive benefit.

Christina Inge, founding father of Thoughtlight, an AI advertising and marketing service, instructed Fortune in a message AI isn’t simply automating busywork, it’s additionally changing into a device AI-fluent staff can leverage to extend their very own worth to an organization—and to outperform their friends. Take, for instance, somebody in gross sales utilizing AI to create extra focused conversations to shut offers quicker, Inge wrote. The identical might be mentioned for customer support staff.

“[Customer service workers fluent in AI] know the right way to interpret AI outputs, write clear prompts, and troubleshoot when issues go off script,” Inge mentioned. “That mixture of human judgment and AI fluency is tough to seek out and nicely price the additional pay.”

In fields like advertising and marketing and science, even single AI abilities can yield massive returns, whereas extra technical positions gravitate to specialists with superior machine studying or generative AI experience.

Crucially, probably the most valued AI-enabled roles demand extra than simply technical wizardry. Employers prize a hybrid skillset: communication, management, problem-solving, analysis, and customer support are among the many 10 most-requested abilities in AI-focused postings, alongside technical foundations like machine studying and synthetic intelligence.

“Whereas generative AI excels at duties like writing and coding, uniquely human skills—akin to communication, administration, innovation, and sophisticated problem-solving—have gotten much more beneficial within the AI period,” the research says.

Winners and losers

The rising repercussions are hanging. Tech staff whose roles are readily automated face rising displacement—until they’ll pivot shortly into rising areas that meld enterprise, technical, and folks abilities. In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of staff outdoors of tech are poised to translate even primary AI literacy into new roles or wage positive aspects. The aggressive edge now lies with organizations and professionals agile sufficient to mix AI capabilities with human judgement, creativity, and enterprise acumen.

For firms, the danger is obvious: treating AI as an remoted technical specialty is now a legal responsibility. Successful corporations are investing to embed AI fluency enterprise-wide, upskilling their advertising and marketing groups, HR departments, and finance analysts to construct a future-ready workforce.

AI will be the supply of turmoil in Silicon Valley boardrooms, however its financial dividends are flowing quickly to staff—and corporations—in each nook of the economic system. For these capable of adapt, AI abilities should not a harbinger of job loss, however a passport to larger salaries and new profession prospects. Nonetheless, the analysis doesn’t point out precisely the place within the earnings ranges the upper postings are coming, so Napper mentioned it’s attainable that we’re seeing some compression, with higher-paid tech jobs being phased out and lower-paying positions being barely better-paying.

Napper mentioned the development of AI abilities cropping up in job postings has exploded over the previous few years, and he doesn’t count on a slowdown anytime quickly. Napper mentioned there’s a “price to complacency”—one that features a vital wage lower. He added that the 28% premium, Lightcast plans to launch follow-up analysis on what stage of the earnings latter the development is hitting probably the most.

For this story, Fortune used generative AI to assist with an preliminary draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the knowledge earlier than publishing.