About 34 percent of job seekers said understanding AI fundamentals is an important skill needed today, while 90 percent said general digital skills are important, regardless of industry, occupation, education level or generational demographics.
That’s according to CompTIA’s Job Seeker Trends survey of 1,000 U.S. job seekers in January. About two-thirds (67 percent) of those job seekers said they were aware of discussions around AI and the potential impact on the workforce, while 33 percent said they were not.
“The latest wave of job seeker data shows a continuation of the near universal recognition of the importance of digital skills across today’s workforce,” said Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA, a leading association for the IT industry, based in Downers Grove, Ill.
“There is an element of ‘pull’ to this trend with employers increasingly requiring digitally savvy workers across more job roles at more job levels,” he said. “The ‘push’ element comes in job seekers bringing the digital tools they know and use to the job, with innovation often driven by workers’ push for better digital tools across the organization.”
Herbert said the spike in AI interest among job seekers “may partially reflect AI hype—such as the news headlines touting prompt engineers earning hundreds of thousands of dollars, and also job seekers wanting to best position themselves for opportunities.”
