You have read about this everywhere, including in Fortune. Maybe you or your friends have been affected: artificial intelligence already transforms work, including hiring and dismissal. Nowhere is the impact that is only visible on the job market.
The technological industry, the original epicenter of the adoption of AI, now sees many of its own workers displaced by the very innovations that they have helped to create. Employers, races to integrate AI in everything, from Cloud Infrastructure to Customer Support, reduce human workforce in software engineering, IT support and administrative functions. The rise in automation power fueled by AI accelerates layoff in the technology sector, with employees impacted up to 80,000 in one accusation. Microsoft only cuts 15,000 jobs While engaging $ 80 billion in new AI investments.
But the Lightcast Labor Market Intelligence offers a glimmer of hope in the future. Job offers for non -technical roles that require AI skills increase in value. The new Lightcast “Beyond the buzzReport, based on the analysis of more than 1.3 billion jobs, shows that these publications offer 28% of higher wages – an average of almost $ 18,000 more per year. Lightcast research underlines the fractionation of technology and non -technical hiring: job offers for AI skills in technological roles remain robust, but the proportion of AI jobs in IT and computer science has dropped from 61% in 2019 to 49% in 2025. Traditional technological roles as IA claim an ever -increasing part of work.
AI demand explodes beyond technology
Rather than stifling labor perspectives, Lightcast's research suggest that IA disperses opportunities in the broader economy. More than half of all jobs asking for skills in AI in 2025 appeared outside the technological sector – a radical inversion from previous years, when AI was confined to the Silicon Valley and IT laboratories. Domains such as marketing, HR, finance, education, manufacturing and customer service quickly integrate AI tools, generative AI platforms that develop marketing content with predictive analysis engines that optimize supply chains and recruitment.
In fact, the job offers mentioning generative skills of AI outside IT and IT have increased by 800% since 2022, catalyzed by the proliferation of tools like Chatgpt, Microsoft Copilot and Dall-E. Marketing, design, education and HR are some of the fastest producers in the adoption of AI – each adapting to new tool boxes, workflows and means of creating value.
Cole Napper, vice-president of research, innovation and talent ideas in Lightcast, said Fortune In an interview that it was struck by the absence of a noticeable scheme for which industries were most affected by the explosion of the skills of AI present in publications, noting that the arts are at the top of the list.
AI skills are in demand
For the workforce as a whole, mastery of AI is becoming one of the most lucrative investments today. Having two or more IA skills sends even higher pay checks, with a 43% bonus on the wages announced.
In 2025, more than 66,000 job offers specifically mentioned a generative AI as competence, an almost quadruple increase compared to the previous year, according to the index report of artificial intelligence of Lightcast in 2025. The modeling of large languages was the second most common IA competence, which presented in 19,500 open work stations. The publications lists the Chatppt and rapid engineering as a third and fourth frequency skills, respectively.
Sectors such as customer / customer support, sales and manufacturing have declared the strongest pay bumps for workers qualified by AI, while companies take place to automate routine functions and operate AI for a competitive advantage.
Christina Inge, founder of Thoughtlight, an AI marketing service, said Fortune In a message, AI is not only the automation of occupied work, it also becomes a tool that AI flow workers can take advantage of their own value to a company and outperform their peers. Take, for example, someone in sales using AI to create more targeted conversations to conclude offers faster, wrote Inge. The same can be said for customer service workers.
“(Customer service workers fluent in AI) know how to interpret AI outings, write clear prompts and help out when things get out of the script,” said Inge. “This combination of human judgment and AI mastery is difficult to find and is well worth the additional salary.”
In fields like marketing and science, even single AI skills can produce large yields, while more technical positions revolve to specialists with advanced automatic learning or AI generative expertise.
Above all, the most popular roles of AI require more than just technical magic. Employers reward hybrid skills: communication, leadership, problem solving, research and customer service are among the 10 most requested skills in AI publications, alongside technical foundations such as automatic learning and artificial intelligence.
“While generative AI excels in tasks such as writing and coding, human capacities in a unique way – such as communication, management, innovation and resolution of complex problems – become even more precious in the era of AI,” said the study.
Winners and losers
The emerging repercussions are striking. Technology workers whose roles are easily automated are facing the increase in travel – unless they can quickly rotate in emerging fields that merge commercial, technical and people skills. Meanwhile, millions of workers outside the technology are about to translate the basic literacy of AI into new roles or wage earnings. The competitive advantage now lies with organizational organizations and professionals to combine AI's capacities with human judgment, creativity and business sense.
For companies, the risk is clear: the treatment of AI as an isolated technical specialty is now a passive. Winning businesses are investing to integrate the company Fluiency on a business scale, increasing their marketing teams, their HR services and its financial analysts to build a ready-to-future workforce.
AI can be the source of agitation in the Silicon Valley meeting rooms, but its economic dividends take place quickly to workers – and businesses – on all corners of the economy. For those who can adapt, AI skills are not a warning sign of job loss, but a passport to higher wages and new career possibilities. However, research does not indicate exactly where in income levels, higher publications arrive, so coating has declared that we can see a certain compression, the more remunerated technological jobs being removed and the less remunerated positions being slightly better paid.
Napped said that the trend in Surging IA skills in job offers has exploded in recent years, and that it does not expect a slowdown in any time. Napped said there was a “cost at the complacency” – which includes a significant drop in salary. He added that the 28%bonus, Lightcast plans to publish follow -up research on the income level that the trend is most strikes.
For this story, Fortune Used a generative AI to help an initial project. An editor checked the accuracy of the information before the publication.