The AI Skills Wage Premium Is 62%. Nobody Can Tell Me What Women Are Getting.

Oct 26

10 min read

A woman in a blazer at her desk reviewing a salary report on a laptop, pen in hand, with a notebook open beside her.

Erica Anderson Rooney is an ex-CPO turned executive coach and AI educator on a mission to get more women into positions of power and keep them there. She is the author of The AI Gap (2026), host of the Glass Ceilings & Sticky Floors and AI Voice or Victim podcasts, and NC Chapter Lead for Women Applying AI. Her SNAP and AI Continuum frameworks are taught to thousands of women through CHIEF, WICT, and Fortune 500 leadership programs. She is the sought-after speaker at the intersection of women, AI, and leadership.

There is a 62% pay bump sitting inside the job market right now, and I have one serious question about it.

Workers with AI skills now earn 62% more on average. That is the AI skills wage premium, measured by PwC in 2026 across more than one billion job ads. I read the whole release looking for one thing, and I never found it. How much of that money is going to women?

Here is what I keep noticing. You have been hearing two stories about AI and your career, and they do not match up.

Story one says the machines are coming for your job, so learn the tools or get left behind. Story two says relax, the human side of work is what counts, so keep being great with people.

You are standing in the middle, doing both jobs at once. You read the room before the meeting starts and you make the call when the data runs out. You coach the new hire, calm the client, and catch the mistake your boss didn’t see in the slide deck at 9pm. (And then you go home and run a second shift there.)

For most of your career those skills had a name. Soft. They showed up in your review as "great collaborator" and "team player," and they showed up in your paycheck as nothing at all.

So when someone tells you AI is about to change what work is worth, you have every right to ask the obvious question. Worth more for whom?

I went looking for the answer. Here is what I found, and here is what I could not find.

Do AI Skills Really Get You Paid More?

Yes. And the size of the number surprised me.

In June 2026, PwC released its 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer. The firm analyzed more than one billion job ads across 27 countries and territories, along with company financial data and data on the tasks inside each occupation. Three findings matter most for your paycheck.

First, workers with AI skills earn a 62% wage premium on average. Last year that number was 57%. So the premium is large, and it is growing.

Second, jobs that require AI skills grew 69%, while the overall job market grew 9%. PwC names prompt engineering and machine learning as examples of the skills it counted.

Third, the premium changes a lot depending on where you work. PwC puts it as high as 118% in consumer markets and as low as 16% in government and public sector work.

Simple bar graphic showing the AI skills wage premium rising from 57% last year to 62% in 2026, with source line PwC 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer.

A quick word on what "AI skills" means here, because the phrase scares people off. Prompt engineering is the practice of writing clear instructions for an AI tool and checking what comes back. Machine learning is the work of building systems that learn from data. One of those is a technical career. The other is something a sharp leader can start practicing this week.

I call it knowing how to talk to the machine. You give it clear direction, you read the answer with a critical eye, and you decide what happens next. That last step is where the second half of this report comes in.

The Skills You Were Told Were Soft Now Come With a Salary

Here is the part of the release I want every woman in leadership to read twice.

PwC looked at 2.4 million entry-level jobs in the US. The entry-level roles most exposed to AI were seven times more likely to require what PwC calls traditionally senior-level, human-intensive skills. Its examples are leadership, creativity, and face-to-face interaction. Openings for those roles grew 35% since 2019. Other entry-level roles shrank 10%.

Look at the direction of that. The beginner jobs that are growing are the ones asking for judgment and leadership on day one.

The same thing shows up above entry level. PwC sorts jobs touched by AI into two groups. In the first group, AI takes over routine tasks and the role leans harder on human judgment and expertise. PwC's examples are radiologists and recruiters. In the second group, AI makes the role easier for a non-expert to do. Jobs in the first group saw twice the growth in openings and 42% faster salary growth than jobs in the second.

And in AI-exposed roles, PwC found that new tasks are 2.5 times more likely to rely on empathy, judgment, and creativity.

A woman leading a small team meeting, listening closely to a colleague while a laptop sits open on the table.

So the market is paying for two things at once. It pays for knowing how to work with AI. It pays for the human judgment to know what to do with the answer. Pete Brown, PwC's Global Workforce Leader, said in the release that organizations need to rethink how they develop talent. I agree with him, and I would add that they need to rethink how they pay for it too.

I have written before about why empathy is a power skill. I spent more than 15 years in HR, rising to Chief People Officer, and I can tell you how these skills have usually been treated at review time. They get a kind sentence. The raise goes to whoever the CEO or leader felt had “potential.” (And we already know that Men are promoted on potential, whereas women are promoted on repeated performance.)

I’ll never forget that for years, I would watch members of my team get glowing reviews. Managers would praise how quickly my talent team could fill seats, and how people-oriented my HR Business Partner was. And when it came time for merit increases, the HR team always seemed to get less. Was it because we weren't "revenue-generating," or was it because we were all women?

That is why this report matters to me. Leadership, judgment, and creativity are now written into job requirements, and those jobs are the ones growing. The skills you were praised for and underpaid for finally have a market price.

Who Is Collecting the AI Skills Wage Premium? Nobody Counted.

Now for my problem with all of this.

PwC's release does not break any of it out by gender. One billion job ads, 27 countries and territories, a 62% premium, and no line telling us how much of that premium reaches women. I looked in the press release and on the report's main page. Neither one mentions women or gender.

I want to be fair to PwC. A job ad tells you what the employer wants and what it will pay. It has no way of telling you who got hired. I understand why the split is missing.

I still want it. Every other piece of research we have says access to AI at work is uneven.

LeanIn.Org and McKinsey published Women in the Workplace 2025 in December 2025, built on data from 124 organizations and a survey of about 10,000 employees. Only 21% of entry-level women said their manager encourages them to use AI tools. For entry-level men it was 33%. The same report found that employees who are encouraged to use AI are over 50% more likely to use it.

Sponsorship follows the same line. At entry level, 31% of women have a sponsor, compared with 45% of men. And for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 93 women were.

Then there is pay itself. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in the second quarter of 2026, women working full time had median weekly earnings of $1,131. That is 82% of the $1,380 median for men.

Graphic with three figures side by side: 21% of entry-level women encouraged by managers to use AI, 33% of entry-level men, and a blank box labeled AI pay premium by gender, not reported.

Put those side by side. A skill carries a 62% premium. Men are encouraged to build that skill more often than women at the very start of their careers. And women already earn 82 cents on the dollar before any premium shows up.

I cannot tell you the AI premium is flowing mostly to men. Nobody can, because nobody published the count. What I can tell you is that a pay advantage this large, arriving in a workplace with those facts, deserves a gender line in the next report.

What goes unmeasured goes unfixed. (Every HR leader reading this just nodded.)

So what do you do with a number like 62% when you do not write code and have no plans to start? Four things.

Move One: Write Down Your Judgment Calls

Human judgment is a paid skill now, and it is the one we are least likely to have on paper.

Start a running note this week. Every time your call changed an outcome, log it in one line with the situation, what you decided, and what happened. Something like this: "Client was about to walk over a billing error. I called her before the invoice went out. Renewal signed."

Ten of those lines turn "great with people" into evidence of leadership and judgment. That is the language PwC found in the job ads that are growing. Use the same words in your self-review, your resume, and your LinkedIn profile.

You are the authority on what your judgment has been worth. Put a record behind it.

Move Two: Learn to Talk to the Machine on Work You Already Do

You can begin without a certificate. Start with one real task.

Pick something you do every week. The status report. The meeting summary. The first draft of a hard email. Give it to an AI tool your company has approved, with clear instructions about the audience and the outcome you want. Read what comes back. Fix what it got wrong.

That fixing step is your judgment at work, and it is the half of the skill employers are paying for.

Then tell someone. Tell your manager which task, which tool, and how much time it gave you back. A skill nobody knows you have will never show up in your pay. (I know. Talking about your own work feels like bragging. Do it anyway.)

Move Three: Bring the Number to Your Pay Conversation

Before your next review, ask your manager or your HR partner two questions. Which roles here list AI skills as a requirement? How does pay for those roles compare with mine?

You are asking for information, and you are entitled to it. If your sector sits near the 16% end of PwC's range, you want to know that. If it sits closer to 118%, you REALLY want to know that.

Then connect it to you. Try this: "I have been using AI for our weekly reporting, and my judgment calls on our largest account kept the renewal. I would like both reflected in my level and my pay."

A woman speaking with her manager across a small table, holding a one-page list of her results.

Notice what that sentence carries. AI skill and human skill, together, with a result attached. That pairing is what the market is rewarding.

Move Four: If You Lead People, Count the Women

This is the move I care about most, because you can make it without waiting for PwC or anyone else.

Pull three lists. Who on your team has been sent to AI training. Who has been put on the AI project. Who holds the roles that now carry AI skills in the job description. Then look at each list by gender.

If the lists are even, wonderful. Tell your team so. If they tilt, you caught it while it is still a training schedule. Fix it with the next assignment you hand out.

Meghan Pierce, President and CEO of the Forum of Executive Women in Philadelphia, made the case for annual pay audits when she joined me on Glass Ceilings & Sticky Floors. You can hear it in my conversation with Meghan Pierce about the pay gap. Add one column to that audit: who is being paid for AI skills.

And remember the Women in the Workplace finding. Encouragement makes people over 50% more likely to use AI. One sentence from you moves that number for the women on your team. "I want you using this, and I want to see what you do with it."

AI Is a Power Shift, and Pay Is Where You See It First

In my book, The AI Gap, I define the AI gap as the compounding distance between those shaping AI systems and those being shaped by them. I break it into Four Gaps: Awareness, Authority, Compounding, and Leadership.

A wage premium is that distance, written in dollars.

The women I coach have spent whole careers building judgment, leadership, and the ability to read people. PwC's data says those skills are rising in value. What they need next is the AI skill to go with it, the record to prove they have both, and a seat in the meeting where the pay bands get set.

Companies have a job here too. Count. Publish the split. If the premium is reaching women at the same rate as men, that is a story worth telling. If it is falling short, you want to find out this year, while it is still small enough to fix in one budget cycle.

The future of work will not wait for women to feel ready. Salaries are being set right now.

A woman leader at a whiteboard reviewing a team list with two colleagues, checking names against a training schedule.

What I Want You to Take From This

AI skills pay more. Human judgment is rising in value right alongside them. You have been building one of those for your whole career, and you can start on the other one this week.

The data on who is getting paid for both does not exist yet. So ask for it. Ask at your company, ask in your industry group, and ask the next time a big report lands without a gender line.

You belong in the group that gets the premium. Go claim it.

If you want the full picture of how AI is changing power and pay for women, and what to do about it, that is why I wrote The AI Gap. It walks through all Four Gaps and gives you a plan for each one. You can get your copy here: https://www.ericaandersonrooney.com/the-ai-gap

You already have the judgment. I am cheering you on while you get paid for it.

Erica

Frequently Asked Questions

Do AI skills really get you paid more?

Yes. PwC's 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer found that workers with AI skills earn a 62% wage premium on average, up from 57% the year before. The premium ranges from 16% in government and public sector work to 118% in consumer markets. PwC's release does not report the premium by gender.

Which human skills are worth more as AI spreads?

Judgment, leadership, creativity, and empathy. PwC found that the entry-level roles most exposed to AI were seven times more likely to require senior-level human skills, and that new tasks in AI-exposed roles are 2.5 times more likely to rely on empathy, judgment, and creativity. Write down your judgment calls so you can show them at review time.

What is the AI Gap?

The AI gap is the compounding distance between those shaping AI systems and those being shaped by them. In my book, The AI Gap, I break it into Four Gaps: Awareness, Authority, Compounding, and Leadership. A wage premium for AI skills is one place where that gap turns into a difference in pay.