New Study: AI Jobs Exploded 1,300% While Salaries Dropped 4%

As AI hiring continues to dominate the 2026 labor market, JobLeads, an online job search platform, analyzed 60 million job postings (Jan 2024-Dec 2025) and classified 110,000 as requiring AI literacy. The data reveals an interesting pattern: demand exploded, but the “AI premium” disappeared.

Key findings:

• Jobs requiring AI literacy exploded 1,300% between 2024 and 2025, yet median salaries fell about 4% year-over-year

• Five industries saw salary increases for AI roles; five saw declines. Bio, Pharma & Health led gains at +18%, followed by Sales (+15%), Consulting (+11%), HR (+4%), and Management (+2%). Marketing & Media took the biggest hit at -7.5%, followed by Legal (-4%), IT (-2%), and Finance (-0.9%)

• 74% of jobs requiring AI literacy are mid-level specialist positions, and only 0.8% are Managing Directors. AI knowledge opens doors to solid $80K-200K roles but doesn't fast-track candidates to leadership

• 52% of AI jobs pay six figures, 11% reach executive compensation ($200K+)

• HR has commoditized AI most: 22% of HR AI jobs are entry-level, the highest share of any industry

• 57% of AI jobs require office presence, only 17% are fully remote–despite AI being entirely digital work. Consulting is the rare exception, offering 52% flexibility (36% hybrid, 16% remote)

• Generative AI tops every other skill at 21%, appearing in one out of every five AI postings, followed by natural language processing (20%), computer vision (15%), and AI integration (13%)

• Only 6% of job listings mention ChatGPT in requirements

"When millions of candidates can claim AI literacy, and when learning those skills becomes a commodity, the reward becomes scarce. As a result, in certain industries, those with deep AI knowledge are no longer competing for scarce specialist roles. They're competing against the flood." –Jan Hendrik von Ahlen, Managing Director & Career Expert, JobLeads

Feel free to check the full study with industry-by-industry breakdowns, salary distribution data, and skill demand analysis. 

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Methodology: Analysis based on 60 million US job postings scraped between January 2024 and December 2025. Jobs were classified as requiring AI literacy if they mentioned any of 35 keywords related to mainstream AI technology, tools, and usage in requirements. The final dataset included 110,000 AI job postings classified across 10 industries and 7 seniority levels. More detailed methodology and limitations available in the full study.