PwC finds AI makes workers more valuable, not replaceable

According to a new article, CNBC reveals that despite widespread concerns that artificial intelligence might lead to job losses and wage cuts, new research from professional services firm PwC reveals a very different story: AI is actually making workers more valuable and creating new opportunities.

“What causes people to react in this environment is the speed of the tech innovation,” PwC Global Chief AI Officer Joe Atkinson said. “The reality is that the tech innovation is moving really, really fast. It’s moving at a pace that we’ve never seen in a tech innovation before.” He added, “What the report suggests, actually, is AI is creating jobs.”

The 2025 AI Jobs Barometer report finds that employment and wages are rising in “virtually every” AI-exposed occupation—including roles traditionally considered highly automatable, such as customer service representatives and software developers.

Carol Stubbings, PwC UK’s global chief commercial officer, said, “We know that every time we have an industrial revolution, there are more jobs created than lost. The challenge is that the skills workers need for the new jobs can be quite different.” She added, “So the challenge, we believe, is not that there won’t be jobs. It’s that workers need to be prepared to take them.”

Analyzing over 800 million job ads and thousands of company reports worldwide, the study debunks six common AI myths, including concerns about productivity, wages, job losses, inequality, skill erosion, and job devaluation.

Notably, workers with AI skills earn on average 56 per cent more than those without, and wages in AI-exposed industries are growing twice as fast as in less-exposed sectors. Productivity in AI-ready industries has nearly quadrupled since 2022, while jobs continue to grow even in highly automatable fields.

Atkinson highlighted that in countries with shrinking workforces, AI-driven productivity could produce a “multiplier effect,” filling workforce gaps and driving business growth. “I believe it can definitely—and will—be a positive development,” he said.

The report concludes that AI should be embraced “as a growth strategy, not just an efficiency strategy.” Companies are urged to support employee adaptation and focus on creating new markets and jobs. “AI, if used with imagination, could spark a flowering of new jobs and new business models,” the report states, noting that two-thirds of today’s U.S. jobs did not exist in 1940, many enabled by technological advances.

By Naila Huseynova