AI talent comes at a 30% salary premium: ‘If you try to play catch up later, this is going to cost you even more’

Adding AI skills to job descriptions could cost employers 28% more in annual compensation, a recent report from research firm Lightcast found. AI-related skills can include expertise with large language models (LLMs), like ChatGPT and Microsoft CoPilot, as well as prompt engineering, text summarization, and more.

A Lightcast analysis of over 1.3 billion job postings in 2024 found roles advertising at least one AI or generative AI skill offered $18,000 more in annual compensation on average than those that did not. Some 51% of these AI roles were not in tech-related industries, up from 44% in 2022.

“AI is becoming more and more pervasive throughout all of the job descriptions that we’re seeing for virtually any different career area,” Cole Napper, VP of research at Lightcast, told HR Brew.

No longer are AI skills only associated with tech or IT roles, Napper said, and the roles that are seeing the biggest rise in AI skill demand are recruiters and HR pros.

Companies that don’t keep up with this trend, he said, could miss out on talent.

“There is a divergence that’s going on between employers who are saying, ‘We’re not leaning into this space. We’re not really seeing the need to do that,” Napper said. “It’s better to recruit sooner than later, because if you try to play catch up later, this is going to cost you even more.”

It’s a supply and demand issue, Napper added. More employers are demanding AI skills, but the supply of employees with these skills has stayed consistent, he said. He suspects the workforce will adjust through upskilling and reskilling, but this will take time.

“There is always a lagging effect, because it takes time for people to build skills,” he said.

This report was originally published by HR Brew.