Demand for AI skills rising, but pay disparity glaring

MANILA -Global demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-related skills has been growing in the last several years, highlighting an increasing need for both employers and employees to ensure that they can keep up with this emerging technology.

Based on the latest report from American banking giant Citigroup, tech-AI jobs grew nine times while broad AI-jobs grew 11.3 times since 2015.

Citi’s “Skills that Pay” report defines tech-AI jobs as those that need technological skills necessary to run, train and test AI models, while broad-AI jobs are those that require an understanding of AI technologies but not the “hard” tech skills.

The report added that jobs in the information technology sector had risen 3.7 times, while total jobs advertised in this field had grown 2.7 times.

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Asia posts highest growth in IT jobs

“Asia stands out as the region with the highest growth over this period, surpassing Northern Europe,” it said.

The report noted that demand for AI talent since 2017 had a seven-fold increase in the manufacturing industry in just a span of five years.

A five-fold increase in demand was also seen in management, while a 21-fold hike was observed in the field of warehousing.

“On the other end, it is striking that health-care AI-talent recruitment is five times smaller than the cross-industry average, posing a huge investment opportunity,” the report said.

The report also cited the huge pay disparity for AI talent, particularly software engineers, due to geographical location.

“In New York, salaries are 10 to 40 times higher than in regions like Pakistan, the Philippines, Egypt, India and Russia. They are also more than two to four times higher than in most European countries, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, China and the United Kingdom,” it said. INQ