If you work in an RTO and are thinking about how AI is changing the industry and occupations you train for, then a new publication from the International Monetary Fund, Bridging Skill Gaps for the Future: New Jobs Creation in the AI Age has a lot to offer.
It looks at how labour market demand for “new skills” has surged and finds that in advanced economies like Australia, approximately 1 in 10 job advertisements now requires at least one new skill. Demand is concentrated in professional, technical and managerial jobs, and more than half of these new skills are IT-related, with artificial intelligence (AI) competencies growing rapidly. The authors treat “new” skills as those hardly present in vacancies in 2010–11 but now commonly demanded; examples include data visualisation tools (Power BI, Tableau), AI skills, etc.
New skills are not confined to the IT sector; they are strongly linked to computer and cognitive tasks and appear across all economic sectors. Healthcare employers increasingly seek “remote-care” skills; marketing jobs demand proficiency with social-media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram; and the energy transition generates demand for climate-engineering and circular economy skills.
While demand for these new skills is widespread across industries, adoption patterns are uneven. New skills first appear in innovation hubs (often the U.S.) and then diffuse to other regions; and this diffusion is faster in countries (and in regions within countries) with levels of higher educational attainment and flexible labour market institutions. Labour market institutions can influence adoption: regional areas in Germany with higher levels of union membership show unions playing a key role in facilitating worker retraining and adoption.
For individual workers, acquiring new skills brings economic benefits. In the U.S. and U.K., job postings listing new skills offer 3 – 3.4 percent higher wages. Benefits accrue mainly to high- and low-skill workers, while middle-skill occupations see little gain or may even decline. The report warns that AI-specific skills may not yield overall employment growth and may reduce employment levels in some occupations. While we are still early on in grappling with AI skills – this pattern signals potential polarisation and underscores the need for inclusive upskilling strategies.
On the supply side, new IT skills appear in every field of study; non-STEM workers who list IT skills in their CVs usually also possess other emerging competencies. AI-developer skills are concentrated among ICT and STEM graduates, but AI-user skills are spread across disciplines. This suggest that integrating AI, IT and digital-literacy components into non-STEM programs could help a broader range of learners acquire emerging skills.
At the firm level, companies posting vacancies with new skills tend to be larger, younger, more innovative, less financially constrained and more productive. Assuming the same pattern is true, RTOs should therefore be looking to engage with innovative small and medium-sized enterprise, not just large incumbent businesses, and help them in upskilling their workers with these new skills.
