The uptake of artificial intelligence by industry will drastically change the UK job market in the coming years – with 133 million new jobs expected to be created globally. In the UK alone, up to a third of jobs will be automated or likely to change as a result of the emergence of AI – impacting 10.5 million workers.
The findings come from a new report – Harnessing the Power of AI: The Demand for Future Skills – from global recruiter Robert Walters and market analysis experts Vacancy Soft.
Ollie Sexton, Principal at Robert Walters comments: “As businesses become ever more reliant on AI, there is an increasing amount of pressure on the processes of data capture and integration. As a result, we have seen an unprecedented number of roles being created with data skill-set at their core.
Ollie thinks that the UK job force cannot afford to not get to grips with data and digitalisation. Mainly because since 2015 the volume of data created worldwide has more than doubled – increasing (on average) by 28% year-on-year.
“Now is the perfect time to start honing UK talent for the next generation of AI-influenced jobs. If you look at the statistics in this report we can see that demand is already rife, what we are at risk of is a shortage of talent and skills,” Ollie pointed out.
Demand for Data Professionals
IT professionals dedicated to data management appear to be the fastest growing area within large or global entities, with volumes increasing ten-fold in three years – an increase in vacancies of 160% since 2015.
More generally speaking, data roles across the board have increased by 80% since 2015 – with key areas of growth including data scientists and engineers.
What has been the most interesting to see is the emergence of data scientist as a mainstream profession – with job vacancies increasing by a staggering 110% year-on-year. The same trend can be seen with data engineers, averaging 86% year-on-year job growth.
Professional Services Hiring Rapidly
The rise of cybercrime has resulted in professional services – particularly within banking and financial services – hiring aggressively for information security professionals since 2016, however since then volumes have held steady.
Within professional services, vacancies for data analysts (+19.5%), data manager (+64.2%), data scientist (+28.8), and data engineer (+62%) have all increased year-on-year.
Tom Chambers, Manager – Advanced Analytics and Engineering at Robert Walters comments: “The uptake of AI across multiple industries is bringing about rapid change, but with that opportunity. Particularly, we are seeing retail, professional services and technology industries’ strive to develop digital products and services that are digitally engaging, secure and instantaneous for the customer – leading to huge waves of recruitment of professionals who are skilled in implementing, monitoring and gaining the desired output from facial recognition, check-out free retail and computer vision, among other automation technologies.”
Similarly, experimental AI is making huge breakthroughs in the healthcare industry, with the power to replace the need for human, expert diagnoses, as Tom believes.
“What we are seeing is from those businesses that are prepared to invest heavily in AI and data analytics, is they are already outperforming their competitors – and so demand for talent in this area shows no signs of wavering,” he concluded.
Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.