PwC: AI is splitting the global labor market into two tracks
The 2026 AI Jobs Barometer finds 'professionalised' roles growing faster than roles being 'democratised' by AI, with human skills gaining value.
EBElena Brandt
Published 6 Jul 2026, 11:15Updated 21 Jul 2026, 09:081 min read
- ▸PwC's 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer describes a "two-track" labor market emerging worldwide
- ▸"Professionalised" roles are growing faster than roles being "democratised" by AI
- ▸Employers are placing rising emphasis on human skills: judgement, creativity and leadership
- ▸Roles in administration, translation, manufacturing and customer service saw the clearest reductions
- ▸New technical and AI-management roles have partly offset those losses
Two tracks, not one trend
Rather than a single story of "AI takes jobs" or "AI creates jobs," PwC's framing suggests the labor market is bifurcating — a genuinely harder trend for policymakers to respond to than either narrative alone.
Source: PwC
