AI skills now carry a 34 per cent wage premium
PwC put the premium at 34.2 per cent in 2025, up from 11 per cent the year before. For employers that is a retention question as much as a recruitment one.
PwC's UK AI Jobs Barometer found that roles asking for AI skills carried a wage premium of 34.2 per cent in 2025. The year before, the same measure sat at around 11 per cent. It tripled in twelve months.
The recruitment reading
Specialist AI job postings grew 61 per cent over the same period, to roughly 180,000 roles. If you are hiring for these skills on the open market, you are competing in a market that has repriced faster than most salary bands have been reviewed.
The retention reading, which matters more
The premium does not only apply to people you are trying to hire. It applies to the people you already employ, the moment they acquire the skill. Training someone and then leaving their role unchanged is how you fund a competitor's hire.
The employers who handle this well do two things: they build the skill in people who already have a reason to stay, and they change the role at the same time as the training, so the new capability has somewhere to go.
Why apprenticeships fit this shape
- The person stays in post and stays productive throughout
- The assessment is built from your own work, so the value lands internally
- The qualification is recognised, which answers the ambition question honestly
- Digital apprenticeship starts in England reached 31,410 in 2024/25, more than double the 2020/21 figure, so this is a well trodden route rather than an experiment
Sources: PwC UK, AI Jobs Barometer, June 2026. Department for Education, Apprenticeships academic year 2024/25, November 2025.