AI skills become a career differentiator: demand has tripled since 2019

Press Release  
AI skills become a career differentiator: demand has tripled since 2019

• Demand for AI skills has more than tripled since 2019 and has risen especially sharply since early 2025
• Marketing, media and PR show strong growth; design is also seeing strong growth
• Share of generative AI within AI-relevant job ads rises from 3.6 percent in 2023 to 17 percent in the first half of 2026
• Clear age gap: 86 percent of under-30s rate their competence in using AI tools purposefully as medium to high, compared with 53 percent among 50- to 59-year-olds

Düsseldorf, 23.09.2026. Demand for AI competencies in job ads has more than tripled since 2019 and has been rising especially sharply since early 2025. This is shown by a new Stepstone analysis of more than 5.6 million job ads. Demand is growing especially fast in occupational fields such as marketing, media and PR. As a result, AI skills are becoming increasingly important even outside classic technology roles.
For the analysis, Stepstone evaluated more than 5.6 million job ads from January 2019 to June 2026. In 2019, an average of 0.85 percent of all ads contained at least one AI skill. In the first half of 2026, this figure had already risen to 2.62 percent. In June 2026 alone, the share reached a new high of 3.49 percent.
The big push has been underway since 2025
The sharp rise only began in early 2025 – more than two years after the launch of ChatGPT. For Dr Christina Langer, labor market economist at Stepstone, this reflects a typical pattern of technological change: “New technologies rarely arrive in everyday work overnight. Companies first experiment, build up data, processes and skills, and then translate the new possibilities into concrete roles. Job ads reflect this step with a delay. The strong increase since 2025 shows that AI is now increasingly arriving in day-to-day work.”
Generative AI in particular is developing dynamically. In 2023, 3.6 percent of all AI-relevant job ads referred to corresponding skills or applications. In the first half of 2026, this figure had already reached 17 percent.
Marketing moves into the top tier
The sciences show the highest share of job ads with AI skills, both in 2023 and in 2025. Marketing makes the biggest leap: there, the share rises from 2.2 percent in 2023 to 7.2 percent in 2025. his moves marketing from fifth to second place overall, narrowly ahead of IT (7.1 percent. Media as well as PR and communications also show strong growth. In design, the share likewise rises significantly, from 1.3 to 4.5 percent. In the first half of 2026, the sciences lead with 13.2 percent, followed by IT with 12.2 percent and marketing with 10.2 percent.
“Generative AI is increasingly becoming a broadly applicable work technology. As a result, requirements are changing simultaneously across many professional fields,” says Langer. „The more widely AI is used, the more important two components become: communicating clearly what you expect from the AI, and critically assessing what it delivers. The former shows up in precise questions and briefings, the latter in the ability to judge when a result is reliable and when it needs to be refined.”
A clear age gap in dealing with AI
How confident employees feel about using AI purposefully and critically reviewing the results depends strongly on age. This is shown by a supplementary Stepstone survey of 4,502 employed people conducted in 2025. According to the survey, 86 percent of under-30s rate their competence in using AI tools purposefully as medium to high. Among 50- to 59-year-olds, the share is 53 percent.
A gap is also evident in critically reviewing AI outputs. 79 percent of under-30s rate their skills here as medium to high. Among 50- to 59-year-olds, the figure is 62 percent.
Where AI skills are barely in demand yet
How often employers explicitly require AI competencies depends strongly on the occupational field. In healthcare, manufacturing, skilled trades, sales, security, the public sector and hospitality, fewer than one percent of job ads explicitly require an AI skill.
“Where physical presence, personal contact or high regulatory requirements shape everyday work, the introduction of new technologies often happens more slowly,” says Langer. “At the same time, AI can also provide relief there, for example with documentation or administrative tasks. Used correctly, it can create more time for what matters most in these professions: personal contact with people.”
About the Stepstone Skills Report 2026
This analysis is part of the Stepstone Skills Report 2026. More than 5.6 million job ads published on Stepstone between January 2019 and June 2026 were examined. An ad was classified as AI-relevant if it contained at least one defined AI term. The term list used comprises around 100 core terms as well as adjacent technologies.
The figures for 2026 refer to the period from January to June and are preliminary. The figures on self-assessed AI competence come from a Stepstone survey of 4,502 employed people in Germany conducted in 2025.
About Dr Christina Langer 
Dr Christina Langer is Senior Economist at The Stepstone Group, an economist and labor market researcher focusing on the future of work, generative AI and skills development. In addition to her role at Stepstone, she is an economist at the ifo Institute and a Digital Fellow at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, part of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. She previously conducted postdoctoral research there on the impact of artificial intelligence, new technologies and changing skill requirements on the labor market, companies and employees. Her work has been published internationally and covered, among others, by The New York Times. In media appearances, talks and analyses, she combines scientific evidence with practical recommendations for businesses, policymakers and the public.
About The Stepstone Group 
The Stepstone Group is a leading global digital recruitment platform that connects companies with the right talent and helps people find the right job. AI-driven job marketplaces and programmatic-powered marketing solutions connect more than 130 million job applications with about 70,000 customers every year. The Stepstone Group operates in more than 10 countries - including Stepstone in Germany, Appcast in the USA and Totaljobs in the UK. The company is headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany and employs more than 2,500 people worldwide. For more information: www.thestepstonegroup.com/english
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