AI skills divide risks leaving majority of workers behind, PwC finds

A widening divide between workers who are benefiting from artificial intelligence and those being left behind is emerging as AI use accelerates, according to a global study by PwC. The consultancy’s 2026 Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey found that 64 percent of workers had used AI at work during the previous 12 months, up 10 percentage points from last year. Daily use of generative AI increased from 14 percent to 22 percent, while 59 percent expect their use of AI tools to increase over the coming year.

But access to training has moved in the opposite direction. Just 51 percent of workers said they had access to the learning and development resources they needed, down from 59 percent a year earlier. PwC argues this is creating an increasingly divided workforce, with employees who already use AI regularly reporting markedly different experiences from those who use it less frequently. Daily AI users were more confident about their job security, with 68 percent saying they felt secure compared with 57 percent of infrequent users. They were also 12 percentage points more likely to ask for a promotion, 15 points more likely to trust senior management and 21 points more likely to be confident in their ability to learn new skills.

The findings are based on responses from 49,364 workers across 48 countries and regions and 29 sectors, collected in May and June this year. PwC said the results were weighted by age and gender to make them broadly representative of working populations in each market.

Pete Brown, global workforce leader at PwC, said employers faced the challenge of developing employees who were already benefiting from AI without neglecting the rest of their workforce. “Workers are under growing pressure from rising workloads, rapid change and external uncertainty,” he said. “But those using AI every day are more confident, more ambitious and more positive about their careers and prospects.”

Majority remain in AI ‘engine room’

PwC divided respondents into four groups according to the scarcity of their skills and their adoption of AI. The largest, described as the “engine room”, accounts for 56 percent of workers and comprises employees whose skills are considered less scarce and who are not far along the AI learning curve. Only two in five workers in this group said they had access to the learning and development resources they needed.

The remaining groups are “front-runners”, accounting for 14 percent of workers and combining scarce skills with strong AI capabilities; “AI insurgents”, at 18 percent, who have less scarce skills but are using AI to deliver more; and “indispensables”, at 11 percent, who possess scarce skills but have made less progress with AI.

PwC said employees in its engine-room category were less likely to be rewarded for using AI, learning new skills or challenging established ways of working, despite making up the majority of the workforce and carrying out much of organisations’ day-to-day work. At the other end of the spectrum, front-runners were 33 percentage points more likely to ask for a promotion. However, their greater confidence may create a retention problem for employers: 29 percent said they were very or extremely likely to change employer during the next year.

Financial and workload pressures increase

The survey also points to broader pressures on workers. Only a third said they had money left at the end of the month, a fall of eight percentage points year on year. Almost three in ten said they had significantly less bargaining power than three years ago, rising by another 10 percentage points among fully remote workers.

Economic uncertainty was a greater source of concern about job security than AI itself. Some 57 percent identified economic volatility as a risk to their jobs, compared with 44 percent who were concerned about AI taking on more tasks.

Employees are also reporting a faster pace of workplace change. Among those who had experienced change at work, 58 percent said there had been more of it during the past year than previously, while 27 percent said fatigue or burnout was limiting their productivity. Four in ten workers said they had needed to apply new skills in their jobs to a large or very large extent during the previous year. The figure was higher among senior executives, at 51 percent, and managers, at 46 percent, compared with 29 percent of non-managers and 38 percent of entry-level employees.

Brown said the findings suggested the workforce was beginning to “move at different speeds”, with those possessing scarce skills and strong AI capabilities becoming both more confident and more mobile. Employers, he said, needed to consider where they invested in skills, how employees were given opportunities to adapt and how they retained the capabilities they most needed.