UK employers face AI skills gap as new roles grow

AI is expected to reshape the U.K. labor market through both disruption and job creation. A new study estimates AI technologies could create as many as 610,000 new jobs by 2028, while analysis of over 500 million job advertisements from 15 high-income countries found U.K. employers willing to pay 14% more for workers with AI skills.

Demand is spreading across major sectors. In financial services, 75% of organizations are already using AI and another 10% plan to adopt it within a few years, creating roles tied to process optimization, cybersecurity, fraud detection, customer support, credit scoring and compliance. In education, 20% of U.K. professionals use AI in their current role, supporting demand for learning experience designers, content creator managers and online community specialists. Healthcare is expected to need AI professionals for personalized treatment algorithms, predictive analytics, remote patient monitoring and workflow optimization.

Skills remain a major constraint. In a recent UK survey, 68% of IT decision makers cited insufficient skills and expertise as their top AI implementation challenge, and 19 percent of the U.K. workforce, or 6.31 million employees, have not been trained to use AI tools at work. Employers are being pushed toward continuous learning models, AI-powered training platforms and partnerships with education providers, while government incentives and internships could help prepare workers for technology that may increase GDP by £550 billion over the next decade.