PwC Australia finds AI-skilled workers earn significantly more as job postings surge
AI-skilled workers in Australia now command a wage premium of 62%, up from 57% the previous year, as demand for workers with artificial intelligence capabilities more than doubled in a span of 12 months, according to new research from PwC Australia.
PwC Australia's 2026 AI Jobs Barometer found job postings requiring AI skills grew from approximately 20,000 in 2024 to 41,000 in 2025, an increase across all sectors following four years of limited growth.
The industries offering the highest wage premiums in Australia follow a U-shaped pattern. Technology, Media and Telecommunications tops the list at 59%, followed by Manufacturing at 57% and Financial Services at 43%.
At the other end, Energy, Utilities, and Resources offers just 8%, with Government and Public Sector at 24%.
PwC Australia partner and workforce practice lead Emma Hardy said employers are increasingly seeking candidates who combine technical AI skills with distinctly human capabilities.
"The advantage in today's tight labour market isn't having the technical expertise alone. Professionals who can apply trusted human skills are the ones who are becoming highly sought after in our rapidly changing workforce," she said.
"Organisations see this combination of capabilities as essential to building their AI foundations, turning AI from a tool into a growth engine. And they're attempting to attract those candidates with incentives such as higher wage premiums."
The findings align with a separate five-year labour market analysis by the Australian Institute of Business (AIB), which found overall net job availability for AI-exposed roles grew 10% between 2019 and 2024.
The premium for AI-skilled workers has also been rising steadily, with the AIB finding that it doubled from 25% in 2023 to 56% in 2024, with AI-skilled workers earning an estimated median salary of $143,000, compared with $104,000 for the broader workforce.
Professionalised, democratised roles
Meanwhile, PwC's barometer identifies a two-track labour market emerging between "professionalised" and "democratised" roles.
Professionalised roles, such as radiologists, employment recruiters, and air traffic controllers, require greater human expertise as AI handles routine tasks.
Democratised roles, such as medical secretaries, software developers, and loan officers, see AI enabling non-experts to perform work previously requiring specialist skills.
Half of all advertised jobs in Australia are currently democratised, while around a quarter are professionalised and the remaining quarter have low exposure to AI.
Since 2021, professionalised roles have seen twice the growth in job advertisements globally and 42% faster salary increases than democratised equivalents.
The research found that new tasks emerging in the most AI-exposed roles are 2.5 times more likely to require human-intensive skills such as empathy, creativity, and leadership.
Workers in those occupations have developed an average of 187 new skills since 2019, compared with 93 for the least-exposed occupations, many of them linked to domain expertise, professional judgement, and regulated practice.
Peter Wheeler, PwC Australia's Managing Director of workforce and change advisory, said those capabilities are beyond the reach of machines.
"The workforce of tomorrow will be less 'doing' and more 'thinking.' As AI adoption increases, critical thought, judgement, and curiosity will be highly regarded," he said.
"This is an opportunity to reimagine traditional ways of learning to prepare the next generation for an AI-powered workforce, embedding responsible AI principles and practices into work."
