AI is starting to create real jobs in the UK, but mainly for people who already have AI skills

[CyberRider56]

A Lloyds Business Barometer survey found most British businesses now say AI has actually created new roles at their company, a notable shift Bloomberg frames as firms moving beyond pure experimentation and genuinely starting to reshape hiring around the technology. A quarter of UK employers report increasingly hiring candidates specifically with AI skills, a fifth are creating entirely new AI-specific roles, and 54% overall said the technology has led to genuine job creation.

This lands alongside separate Indeed data shared with Bloomberg showing a more complicated underlying picture, British firms posted about 10% fewer vacancies this month compared to January 2025, a headline decline that disguises real disparities. Software developer postings, a profession that suffered dramatic job losses since 2022 as AI transformed the field, are actually back up 14%, with much of that increase concentrated in senior roles directly linked to AI work specifically.

The pattern extends to blue collar work in the opposite direction. Manufacturing postings are down 58% since June 2022 and have shown no meaningful recovery, alongside continued weakness in installation, maintenance, loading, stocking and construction roles, casting real doubt on new Prime Minister Andy Burnham's push encouraging young people toward technical qualifications, with Burnham having argued in a social media video that AI may be able to write an essay but it can't make a train.

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey has pointed to a low hire. Low fire economy as the underlying cause of Britain's youth unemployment sitting at its highest level in over a decade, and separately flagged the harder challenge of firms actually moving from simply adopting AI tools to genuinely using them as a productivity booster, noting that AI's actual productivity effect may follow a J-curve where businesses need real time to learn effective use before benefits show up in the numbers.

The Lloyds survey also found two thirds of firms with turnover above £10 million believe their current workforce already has the AI skills the business needs. Compared to just over half of firms overall, and over 70% of large businesses plan to increase their AI investment specifically to boost productivity going forward, suggesting the current job creation, concentrated as it is among already skilled workers, is likely to keep widening rather than narrowing in the near term

Ai Is Starting To Create Jobs In The Ukwww.bloomberg.com

[VoidRanger24]

Also worth noting, the skills gap between large firms. Two thirds confident in their workforce, and firms overall, just over half, suggests this two speed pattern applies within company size too, not just across different sectors and job types

[Joanne]

My read, the bar rising specifically for entry level and less specialised workers is the particularly concerning part of this whole story.

Someone starting their career now needs either specialist AI capability or deep domain experience just to compete, which is a much higher bar than previous generations faced

[PhilippeMercadal]

Software developer postings recovering specifically in senior AI linked roles rather than across the board is the detail that actually matters here. This isn't the profession broadly bouncing back, it's a narrower recovery concentrated among people who already have exactly the right specific skills

[Linda52]

Not sure how sustainable the current AI hiring premium actually is longer term. If AI tools keep improving and become quite easier to use, the current advantage that specialist AI skilled workers hold could plausibly narrow over time as those skills become more broadly common across the workforce

[Phil7]

Think low hire low fire as an explanation for youth unemployment is a useful economic framing.

Employers not actively cutting staff but also not creating enough new entry level opportunities produces exactly this kind of stuck labor market for people trying to break in

[Ederson]

Burnham's train quote is a clearly sharp political soundbite.

But the actual Indeed data on manufacturing and blue collar postings staying weak suggests the underlying policy challenge is more complicated than one clever line about AI not being able to build physical things

[Mason0]

The J-curve framing from Bailey deserves way more mainstream attention.

That's a quite useful way to think about why AI adoption and AI productivity gains aren't showing up together in the data yet, there's a real learning curve most coverage skips past entirely