AI hiring and wages in UK surge as they outpace jobs market

Specialist AI job postings surged by 61% in the UK during 2025, rising by 68,000. A new study from PwC suggests that the move reflects a shift from infrastructural implementation of the technology, to identifying specific roles for it – as a rising number of the roles advertised related to specialists employed to apply AI in a certain field of expertise.

Since the public launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, excitement around artificial intelligence has never been far from the headlines. But while hype has continued to power record investments in the stock market to help fund the – largely loss-making – technology, background noise around the technology’s practical benefits has been ramping up in the almost four-years since.

With some studies finding that fewer than one-in-ten firms investing in AI have experienced a meaningful return, and the vast majority of projects ‘stuck’ in a piloting phase (not progressing as it is not clear how scalable the results are), the pressure is finally on for AI’s defenders to prove its worth. The latest research from PwC may give those champions fresh straws to clutch to – if hiring intention is any indicator of AI’s actual performance.

Analysing Lightcast data relating to 2025 job listings, PwC contends that demand for AI skills in the UK saw a rapid resurgence in the last year. Since the boom starting in 2022, job postings for AI related skills has fallen consistently in Britain – tumbling from 182,000, to 119,000 and 112,000 consecutively. But that picked up by more than 68,000 roles in 2025 – to sit close to the 2022 peak going into the new year.

The analysis, based on more than one billion job adverts globally, signals renewed momentum in demand for AI capabilities across the economy, according to PwC – but also a change in those demands. Specialist AI jobs now account for 2.2% of the overall job market, up from 1.3% last year – and growth of those vacancies is outpacing others related to AI.

So-called AI user roles – advertising for specialists who apply AI effectively within a field of expertise – increased by just under 66,000, the bulk of the added roles in 2025. That 65.8% growth significantly surpassed the growth for developer roles – which still expanded by 2,600, or roughly 21%, from 2024. And this could signal that firms – and investors – may finally be about to see what the technology can actually do, as emphasis shifts from people building the necessary infrastructure, to people tasked with making the most of the technology’s alleged potential in defined, quantifiable roles.

Claire Reid, chief technology and innovation officer at PwC, said, “After a period of slower growth, this increased demand for AI skills is encouraging and, while still a relatively low proportion of the job market, it signals a step change in how organisations are adopting AI. The experimentation phase is over and businesses want to scale and embed the technology properly. This requires specialists who understand the art of the possible, where AI can create value in different situations, and help others do the same. There’s a difference between building an AI-literate workforce and expecting everyone to become an AI specialist overnight.”

PwC also found that overall vacancies across the economy fell 6.6% compared to the previous year – suggesting that the search for AI skills is now powering the UK labour market. However, the study did also show that AI is also partially dependent on the state for this transformation – with the government and public sector leading the way in its search for the much touted AI user roles. There, 97% of job postings were related to this.

Indeed, having ballooned since the change of government in 2024, the state’s attempts to ‘mainline AI into the economy’ have seen the government become the third most-likely sector to post an AI-related job ad, accounting for just under 5% of such postings, behind TMT and the health industry on 10% and 8% respectively. In 2022, by contrast government roles accounted for less than 1%.