The conversation around AI and the jobs market is dominated by anxiety. People worry that roles will be lost to agents – that the job market will dry up from the impact of AI. As a result, there will be a general constriction in the volume of career opportunities out in the world. But is this concern well-founded, what does the data indicate – is it a bleak outlook?
Drilling down into the latest trends and labor market statistics, we can see that the facts paint a different picture. What’s going on? It’s quite a positive shift with the data showing that the job market is in fact rebounding and settling around AI.
Job postings mentioning AI have surged. Since last year, specialist AI job postings have increased by 61% in the UK. This is according to PwC’s AI Jobs Barometer, recording 68,000 new roles and bringing AI hiring volumes back to around 2022 levels. Why are we seeing this uptick? The rise in hiring reflects a broader pressure on companies to deploy and manage AI effectively.
Latest Videos FromTechRadar
The new AI jobs drive
From a safety standpoint, we’re seeing concerns mounting around open-weight models. We’re also seeing mounting pressure from AI legislators and industry watchers, calling for watertight regulation and governance processes to be put in place.
That pressure has direct implications for workforce strategy – are you hiring the right talent for AI management, do you have the skills in place within your organization to best handle AI operations? Better AI starts with people, and this is where we’re seeing the job market respond over time.
AI roles are vital for the success of the UK AI economy. According to Coursera research, 88% of leaders agree that planned AI investments will not succeed without increasing investments in skills development. The future of work will be defined by those who navigate these changes effectively – knowing how to work seamlessly alongside AI is critical.
The conversation around AI has been dominated by fears of automation replacing workers. But our UK research tells a very different story. While 85% of organizations are already using AI agents in workflows, businesses are increasingly investing in the people needed to govern, secure and scale them.
Among UK IT leaders: 65% expect overall headcount to increase over the next three years, compared with just 14% expecting it to fall. On top of this, only 8% say AI agents are primarily eliminating jobs today. Meanwhile, 48% are hiring AI agent operators, 31% are hiring security, risk and compliance specialists, and 26% are hiring AI ethics and governance specialists.
AI governance becomes a growth function
This is a positive hiring strategy shift, generating scope for AI upskilling, and talent pool growth within the UK economy. What we’re seeing here is that AI governance has become a growth function. Historically, in a negative sense, governance has been framed as a constraint designed to slow down innovation for safety. In the agentic era, that attitude is being reversed.
Strong governance has become the ultimate accelerator. With the UK’s rigorous focus on expanding AI investment and infrastructure, governance needs to be front-of-mind for those innovation-hungry organizations. Additionally, according to our research, nearly 94% of UK organizations say stronger governance would help them move faster with AI, while 93% believe it’s essential to scaling AI responsibly.
This is about a concerted focus on ‘re-plumbing’ fundamental structures. UK business leaders understand that teams cannot move fast without confidence in their safety structures. Without clear guardrails, organizations trying to scale AI hit a wall. Employees can leak corporate data, or autonomous systems can surface restricted content. Governance, permissions, and access controls make AI trustworthy, transforming compliance into a growth engine.
How AI is creating new careers, not just changing existing ones
LLM Engineer, Prompt Engineer, AI Governance & Compliance Manager, Chief AI Officer – these are unique new roles we are seeing. AI job risk has been widely discussed in the media, but in fact a bump in opportunities is happening – new opportunities are being created for new, focused AI roles.
As emerging technology becomes embedded into day-to-day operations, demand is growing for specialists who can oversee AI systems, manage risk, ensure compliance and build trust.
For candidates looking to enter this field, knowing how to work alongside digital agents will be the baseline competency of the 21st century – those entering the workforce will increasingly need to build AI literacy. This is where the job market is heading, and skills strategy must align with that too. And it’s not just for deeper technical knowledge – it’s the skills to interrogate and control AI tools from a critical thinking perspective.
The ‘human in the loop’ discussion is not going away – we can see from machine-vs-machine cyber threats that human control is more important than ever. The question is, how do I become the person for that job? For those in the job market seeking these kinds of opportunities, the goal must be a hybrid skill set blending technical literacy with human judgment
The data disconnect with AI engines
Governance is only part of the opportunity. Data and knowledge management are becoming equally important. What we’re seeing now, in that wider ‘re-plumbing’ discussion, is that data libraries are also failing.
While 96% of organizations say access to company knowledge is critical for AI success, only 32% have connected AI agents to trusted internal content across multiple use cases. This disconnect is hurting the growth potential of AI, and limiting its scope to single-use, isolated areas.
Without this connection, agents are left blind and prone to errors. This content disconnect is the primary reason why enterprise pilots stall. Bridging this operational gap requires organizing and securing corporate content pools, and thus hiring the right talent for the job – in the process, creating a massive, multi-year runway of work for data stewards and AI operators.
These kinds of needs or requirements can’t be ignored – especially by larger enterprises that are betting big on AI ROI. They need to iron this out now, and will look to hire the right people for that process.
On the horizon
It’s true there has been significant disruption to the jobs market from AI. Any major technology that has such a wide-reaching impact will create huge ripple effects. But as we study that impact, we can see new opportunities emerging for eagle-eyed candidates and employees. The bottom line is that good governance will be the core foundation for AI.
By framing governance as the foundation of a modern, managed digital workforce, we can unlock unprecedented productivity. And in this transition, we create new sets of roles, reordering the skills priority list. It’s those individuals who are receptive to those changes, and stand out with the right, competent skill sets, who will be the ones to prosper and benefit. This is an exciting time for the technology sector – one that is creating high-value careers for the next generation.
We’ve featured the best AI website builder.
This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.
The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit
