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A decline in IT jobs over the last calendar year has been offset by a rise in AI positions, an indication that the tech industry’s needs are evolving.
AI positions have higher salaries, according to a Wall Street Journal report on the change in job postings. The Journal reported that AI postings were up 42% in January 2024 since December 2022—although IT jobs overall have declined 31% in the same period.
“It’s the tech area du jour,” Andrea De Ville, a partner at professional services firm Aon, told the Journal. “Everybody wants to know about premium pay for AI-related roles.”
Salaries for AI positions are higher than their IT counterparts, sometimes by tens of thousands of dollars. In one example the Journal found from ZipRecruiter, a data manager position was paid $23,000 more in an AI role than for a normal role. As IT Brew reported in January, New York was the city with the most AI jobs in December 2023, followed by San Francisco and Seattle.
An analysis from CompTIA confirmed the rise in AI postings. The trade association saw 200,000 new AI job listings in the last calendar year, it reported on February 28, and the positions reached a benchmark 10% of all US tech postings. In order to meet the demand, CompTIA Chief Product Officer Thomas Reilly said in a statement, “millions of existing professionals will need to upskill and acquire new AI competencies.”
AI’s impact on employment was a focus of a recent conversation Morning Brew Daily had with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Host Neal Freyman asked him about C-suite language referring to “a strategic reorganizing of their focus, where they’re investing more in AI.”
“I think that there will be a bunch of transformation that will mean that certain jobs, we don’t do them in the way that we’re doing them now,” Zuckerberg said.