There may be a great deal of consternation about AI eating up jobs, but for right now, it is creating a lot of jobs. Overall, three out of four companies are experiencing skills shortages across all categories, much of it thanks to demand for AI skills.
The shortage of AI skills is global in scope, which shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise. But accompanying that is an ever-more insatiable demand for the leadership and human skills needed to move AI-enabled organizations forward. Without human leadership skills, all those cool AI apps and agents will just sit there, serving no purpose, if they’re even created correctly at all.
The latest update from ManpowerGroup, based on a survey of 39,063 employers across 41 countries, finds 72% report difficulty filling roles – only down slightly from 74% last year.
Human skills still top the list of desired attributes. These include communication, collaboration and teamwork, sought by 39%. Additional skills in demand include professionalism and work ethic (36%), along with adaptability and willingness to learn (34%).
On the technical side, for the first time, AI skills have surpassed all others to become the most difficult for employers to find globally, overtaking traditional engineering and IT capabilities, the survey shows. The competition for AI capabilities is “fierce,” the study’s authors point out.
The most difficult-to-find skills include AI model and application development (cited by 20%), AI literacy (19%), and engineering (19%). Other skills cited include sales and marketing (18%), along with manufacturing and production.
Demand for people skills and AI skills are converging, because neither can deliver meaningful progress without the other. Call it demand for tech-savvy renaissance managers or professionals – capable of recruiting, motivating, and inspiring people to leverage AI and other technology to advance innovation on a consistent basis. And, importantly, understand the right models and applications that will work for their business.
“Agentic AI is not simply a new tool to deploy; it introduces a new paradigm in which humans and AI agents work together,” says Sandra Durth of McKinsey, in a recent essay. “Value creation will depend less on technical sophistication alone and more on whether people trust, adopt, and effectively collaborate with these systems.” In other words, leadership.
Durth acknowledges that AI agents will assume “analytical, administrative, and coordination tasks.” That means focusing on “identifying and cultivating the uniquely human contributions that will matter most.” She identifies these skills as “judgment, empathy, decision-making, and systems thinking—all areas where humans complement, rather than compete with, machines.”
This blend of skills needs to be accelerated “by investing in upskilling at all levels, encouraging experimentation, and empowering employees to act as change agents,” says Durth. “Adoption becomes far more likely when people don’t have systems imposed on them but instead become involved in shaping how agents are used.”
Ninety-one percent of employers in the Manpower survey are deploying such a mix of strategies. The main approach is upskilling or reskilling, cited by 27%.
Gaining advantage from AI is a people process, Durth says. “AI agents may become pillars of the next-generation workforce, but the future will be built by organizations that redesign work, leadership, and learning around people.”
