Dive Brief:
- A wide range of AI proficiency among workers is creating new divisions in the workforce, with the biggest cohort of jobholders saying they are falling behind their more tech-savvy colleagues, PwC found in a survey released Tuesday.
- The Big Four accounting firm sorted employees into four groups based on their AI skill levels. At the top are “front-runners” who have strong AI capabilities (comprising 14%); then “AI insurgents,” active users with more common AI skills (18%); "indispensables" who have other highly valued skills but who are lagging in AI learning (11%); and, at the bottom, those in the “engine room” (56%), which includes workers who don’t have specialized skills and who are also “not far along” in AI learning.
- Pete Brown, Global Workforce leader at PwC, urged employers to pay more attention to those who are on the bottom rung in AI proficiency, because they are responsible for keeping daily operations running. “There is a real risk that the global workforce is starting to move at different speeds,” he said in the report.
Dive Insight:
The impact of AI on the labor market was a salient point in an address by a White House economist on Monday. Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, told the Economic Club of New York that AI is creating jobs rather than killing them, CFO Dive previously reported.
PwC conducted its Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2026 in May and June, gathering responses from 49,364 workers in 48 countries across 29 business sectors.
The AI cohorts emerging suggest a have and have-not scenario. The top group appears to be benefiting from their AI fluency, with 29% saying they are likely to change jobs next year and confident about job security. In contrast, a majority of workers on the bottom rung “are the least likely of the four cohorts to say they feel ready to adapt, while only half feel confident in their job security.”
The findings echo a PwC report released in June that detailed an emerging “two-track” labor market that offers advantages to certain professional roles requiring human expertise versus jobs that AI enables non-experts to perform.
