AI driving the ‘next generation’ of jobs in the UK

18th December 2019

Robert Walters

Anna Flockett

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The uptake of artificial intelligence by industry will drastically change the UK job market in the coming years – with 133 million new jobs expected to be created globally. In the UK alone, up to a third of jobs will be automated or likely to change as a result of the emergence of AI – impacting 10.5 million workers. The findings come from a new report – Harnessing the Power of AI: The Demand for Future Skills - from global recruiter Robert Walters and market analysis experts Vacancy Soft.

Ollie Sexton, Principal at Robert Walters commented: “As businesses become ever more reliant on AI, there is an increasing amount of pressure on the processes of data capture and integration. As a result, we have seen an unprecedented number of roles being created with data skill-set at their core.

“Our job force cannot afford to not get to grips with data and digitalisation. Since 2015 the volume of data created worldwide has more than doubled – increasing (on average) by 28% year-on-year.

“Now is the perfect time to start honing UK talent for the next generation of AI-influenced jobs. If you look at the statistics in this report we can see that demand is already rife, what we are at risk of is a shortage of talent and skills.”

Demand for Data Professionals
IT professionals dedicated to data management appear to be the fastest growing area within large or global entities, with volumes increasing ten-fold in three years – an increase in vacancies of 160% since 2015.

More generally speaking, data roles across the board have increased by 80% since 2015 – with key areas of growth including data scientists and engineers.

What has been the most interesting to see is the emergence of data scientist as a mainstream profession – with job vacancies increasing by a staggering 110% year-on-year. The same trend can be seen with data engineers, averaging 86% year-on-year job growth.

Professional Services Hiring Rapidly
The rise of cybercrime has resulted in professional services - particularly within banking and financial services - hiring aggressively for information security professionals since 2016, however since then volumes have held steady.

Within professional services, vacancies for data analysts (+19.5%), data manager (+64.2%), data scientist (+28.8), and data engineer (+62%) have all increased year-on-year.

Top Industries Investing in AI

Agriculture
Business Support
Customer Experience
Energy
Healthcare
Intellectual Property
IT Service Management
Manufacturing
Technical Support
Retail
Software Development

Tom Chambers, Manager - Advanced Analytics and Engineering at Robert Walters commented: “The uptake of AI across multiple industries is bringing about rapid change, but with that opportunity.

“Particularly, we are seeing retail, professional services and technology industries’ strive to develop digital products and services that are digitally engaging, secure and instantaneous for the customer - leading to huge waves of recruitment of professionals who are skilled in implementing, monitoring and gaining the desired output from facial recognition, check-out free retail and computer vision, among other automation technologies.

“Similarly, experimental AI is making huge breakthroughs in the healthcare industry, with the power to replace the need for human, expert diagnoses.

“What we are seeing is from those businesses that are prepared to invest heavily in AI and data analytics, is they are already outperforming their competitors – and so demand for talent in this area shows no signs of wavering.”