Forget job loss, study shows AI may add $18K to your paycheck | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

Many people in various positions across multiple industries were shaken by the January World Economic Forum survey results showing 41% of employers plan to downsize their workforce and replace some human workers with artificial intelligence.

Undoubtedly, AI has already notably disrupted the job market, affecting a myriad of industries and roles.

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Dario Amodei, the CEO of AI company Antropic, recently told Axios that the technology could destroy as many as half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next five years.

CareerMinds shed light on specific jobs that are most likely to be impacted.

Jobs with the highest risks of being replaced by AI include:

Administrative and office support;
Customer service;
Manufacturing and warehousing;
Transportation and delivery;
Retail and hospitality;
Media and content generation.

Huge employers that have already cut a significant portion of their workforce to replace it with AI include MSN, Google, Ikea, Salesforce, Duolingo, Klarna, and Best Buy.

Last month, e-commerce giant Amazon confirmed that the company expects its use of AI to “reduce our total workforce” over the next few years.

In addition, “More than 15,000 Microsoft employees have been let go in 2025 alone, as part of what [CEO Satya] Nadella described as a necessary but painful restructuring in the age of AI,” reports Steve Symington.

Amid all these talks about AI replacing our jobs, a new report offers hope for some positions.

A new report highlights several positive effects of AI technology on the job market.

Image source&colon; Getty Images

Study reveals AI can help you boost your salary by $18k per year

The World Economic Forum’s January Future of Jobs Report revealed that 77% of surveyed large companies plan to reskill and upskill their existing workforce between 2025 and 2030 to work more effectively with AI.

Additionally, 69% of respondents confirmed plans to recruit talent skilled in AI tool design and enhancement, and 62% expect to concentrate on hiring individuals with the skill to work with AI.

This report already signaled something significant: AI will not only eliminate jobs but also create opportunities for new ones.

More recently, new research from labor market analytics company Lightcast reveals that job postings including AI skills offer 28% higher salaries — nearly $18,000 more per year — than those without such capabilities.

To arrive at this figure, Lightcast analyzed more than 1.3 billion job postings, aiming to understand how AI is really changing the job market.

As Lightcast VP of Research and Insights Cole Napper explained, companies that consider AI just another niche technical skill will “find themselves competing for talent with organizations that have embedded AI literacy across their entire workforce.”

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Nasser stressed the importance for educators to include AI skills across programs, not instead of other skills, but alongside them.

AI will likely be everywhere, but won’t be able to replace everyone

The Lightcast report further revealed that AI adoption is already underway across multiple sectors. As of 2024, 51% of job postings demanding AI skills are outside IT and computer science occupations.

However, some CEOs only talk about AI killing many jobs, bragging about it without seeing the bigger picture.

For example, Elijah Clark, a consultant on AI marketing and brand automation strategies, recently told Gizmodo, “As a CEO myself, I can tell you, I’m extremely excited about it. I’ve laid off employees myself because of AI.”

“AI doesn’t go on strike. It doesn’t ask for a pay raise,” he added.

While this is all true, companies face some pitfalls when implementing AI technology broadly, as it also requires a lot of money and energy to maintain.

The Associated Press reported just recently that an AI data center that would use more electricity than every home in Wyoming combined (before expanding five times) will be built near Cheyenne.

Brayan Hayes, a strategist at Zacks Investment Research, said that restructuring with AI is a “double-edged sword,” writes Euro News.

Lightcast’s report stresses that AI will not replace people but rather help them be more efficient at their jobs. Napper told Quartz, “AI-powered creator tools don’t replace people. They make real people better at their work. The companies that succeed will be the ones who invest in AI skills broadly, not just in a few technical roles.”

At the end of the day, job markets are constantly changing, and technology has made many jobs — such as lift operators and switchboard operators — obsolete.

With AI progress, some jobs are likely to go away, but new jobs will also be developed, and they will require AI skills.