In the initial half of 2025, over 77,000 tech workers globally have faced layoffs, according to recent company filings and labor market data. Tech giants like Microsoft, Google, IBM, and Salesforce have attributed these reductions to generative AI tools that streamline tasks like coding, marketing content creation, and HR administration. Beyond the tech industry, companies in sectors including call centers, media, and legal services have also cut junior positions, citing the increased efficiency and cost-effectiveness of chatbots and document-review systems.
Yet job-market analysts stress that headline cuts hide a slower churn beneath the surface. Most affected roles are entry-level or routine knowledge tasks. Senior developers, product owners, project managers, and creative leads remain in demand because they guide and check the machines. Skills, not headcount, are the dividing line.
Where the new work is emerging
The World Economic Forum projects that AI will destroy 92 million posts but create 170 million new ones by 2030. Early evidence supports that claim. Recruitment platform Indeed reports a 38 per cent rise in UK adverts for prompt engineers, data curators and human-in-the-loop reviewers since January. Health services, construction sites and logistics operators are also hiring, filling shortages that AI cannot yet solve in nursing, bricklaying, and long-haul driving.
Crucially, many openings sit in small firms, not the giant brands making the headlines. Smaller manufacturers are trialling autonomous quality-control cameras; farms are testing drone crop-monitoring. Each project needs technicians, safety auditors and trainers. Gartner expects that by 2028 one in three enterprise software suites will ship with an embedded AI agent, creating steady demand for implementation specialists.
Governments and companies admit they are playing catch-up. Only one in five large employers has a funded plan to retrain staff for AI-centred work, according to a survey by IBM. The risk is a two-tier market: workers who learn to steer AI tools and those replaced by them. Policy advisers urge three practical moves:
Add compulsory AI literacy to all vocational courses by 2026.
Offer tax credits to firms that prove they redeploy, not remove, staff;
Expand safety-net schemes so redundant workers can study while drawing benefits.
Economists warn that the last industrial revolution unfolded over decades, but generative AI is moving in months. The next eighteen months will show whether promises of “augmented work” translate into stable, well-paid jobs or a deeper divide between digital haves and have-nots.
Source – https://www.wionews.com/technology/why-ai-skills-are-crucial-for-the-2025-job-market-1751281190396