AI’s global job impact revealed — Australia plateaus, New Zealand shifts gears

Skills needed for AI-exposed jobs are changing 66% faster than for other jobs, according to The Fearless Future: 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer by PwC. This is up sharply from 25% last year — a clear sign of a fast-evolving global labour market.

Based on nearly a billion global job ads, the report reveals AI is rapidly redefining job roles in every sector across six continents, including industries once seen as AI-resistant, like agriculture and construction. 

Crucially, AI adoption is linked to gentler job growth, not sharp declines. “Like electricity, AI has the potential to create more jobs than it displaces if it is used to pioneer new forms of economic activity. Our data suggests that companies are indeed using AI to help people create more value rather than simply reduce headcount,” the report pointed out.

The AI shift is also democratising opportunity. As AI tools lower entry barriers, demand for formal degrees is falling, especially in jobs highly automated by AI. Employers are prioritising adaptable, tech-ready skills over traditional credentials.

Australia’s AI job boom levels off, some sectors shift priorities

After more than a decade of steady growth, Australia’s demand for AI-skilled jobs is showing signs of plateauing, with job postings holding flat at 23,000 since 2021 and a minor dip to 22,000 in 2023, said the PwC report.

While total job postings demanding AI-related skills grew from around 2,000 in 2012 to over 23,000 in 2024, the recent flat growth indicates that the explosive demand may have hit a ceiling — at least in terms of volume.

Despite this stagnation, AI jobs in finance and insurance are surging ahead, maintaining their dominance with an 11.8% share of postings in 2024 after a dramatic spike to 15.7% in 2021. The information and communication sector is also steadily gaining, now accounting for 6.9% of AI-skilled job postings, the report said.

In contrast, dominant sectors like professional, scientific, and technical activities are losing ground, with their share slipping to 6.7% in 2024. Human health and social work now sits at 11.1%, despite earlier gains.

Even as AI reshapes the job market, a quieter shift is underway – jobs most exposed to AI and Gen AI are seeing slower growth. Since 2019, high-exposure occupations have grown just 14%, while less-exposed roles are accelerating. The gap between the most and least AI-exposed roles has widened since 2021.

A correlation coefficient of -0.58 for AI exposure and -0.49 for GenAI exposure suggested a strong inverse relationship between tech exposure and job growth. The more replaceable a job is by AI, the slower it's growing. 

On the qualifications front, degree requirements are slipping in high-exposure AI roles. These jobs now require a degree 69% of the time — down 5 percentage points since 2019 — while lower-exposure jobs remain unchanged at 24%, according to the report.

Similarly, jobs exposed to automation and augmentation are showing a shift. Degree requirements for automated roles dropped from 80% in 2019 to 74% in 2024, and from 71% to 67% for augmented roles. “The majority of augmented and automated jobs in Australia still list degree requirements, showing continued reliance on formal education,” it said.

New Zealand’s AI job market shows strength amid hiring slowdown 

Despite a cooling labour market and fewer job postings overall in 2024, New Zealand’s demand for AI-related skills remains resilient, with only a slight dip in AI-specific roles and a continued rise in its share of total job postings.

AI job postings peaked at around 6,000 in 2022, and while total job postings declined in 2024, the relative demand for AI skills continued to grow, signaling strength and staying power for tech-driven roles, it said.

Sectors like financial services and education are leading in the country’s AI adoption, with 9.3% and 9.0% of their job postings requiring AI skills, respectively. Financial services overtook education in 2024, although education had previously led with a peak of 12.3% in 2022, it added.

The health and social sector remains the country's top AI job creator, with job posting share soaring from 5.6% in 2019 to 18.5% in 2024, reversing a prior decline from 2012 to 2019. In contrast, professional services — the second-largest sector — slipped from 5.7% in 2012 to 5.0% in 2024, indicating shrinking demand for traditional skilled roles.

Manufacturing and construction remain the lowest adopters of AI, with less than 1% of job postings in these sectors requiring AI-related skills, highlighting a digital divide in AI integration across industries.

While job postings across all sectors declined between 2019 and 2024, those more exposed to generative AI saw smaller drops, suggesting relative resilience. A similar trend holds for general AI exposure: although higher-AI-exposure occupations had slower growth, they also showed greater adaptability in skills required.

Roles in the top quartile of AI exposure underwent a 1.27x higher skill change compared to the least-exposed, with net skill evolution averaging 5.7 new requirements versus 4.5 for low-exposure jobs — a 27% greater shift, underscoring AI’s disruptive influence on job content, as per the recent report.

Education requirements are also shifting. Jobs with high AI exposure now require degrees 81% of the time, up just 1 percentage point since 2019. But the surprise lies in lower-AI-exposure roles, where degree requirements jumped from 39% to 46% — a seven percentage point rise — narrowing the qualification gap by six points.

“Due to this the gap between high and low AI-exposure jobs has shrunk by six percentage points, with jobs in the top half of exposure now requiring a degree only 1.8 times more often,” the report pointed out.

Interestingly, augmentation-exposed roles saw degree requirements edge up from 79% to 80%, while automated roles increased from 81% to 83%, bucking global trends of de-emphasizing formal qualifications. “The vast majority of augmented and automated jobs in New Zealand still list degree requirements, showing continued reliance on formal education,” it said.