Employers are offering premiums to workers with AI experience on their resumes

If you have AI expertise companies will pay you more and in some cases it’s as much as 20 per cent higher than those without the skills.

AI skills could command a premium of up to 20 per cent, experts say.

AI skills are attracting a premium and those who have specialist skills are expected to be paid as much as 20 per cent more than their peers over the next 12 to 18 months.

On average, the hiring of workers with AI skills outpaced other industries by 12 per cent over the past year, according to Microsoft-owned jobs platform LinkedIn.

LinkedIn found Australia’s AI talent pool had grown 537 per cent between 2016 and 2022 and the platform reported a 62 per cent increase in the number of members adding AI skills to their profile over the past five years.

The top AI skills for Australian workers were machine learning, deep learning and artificial intelligence.

Meanwhile, the fastest growing skills were computer vision, which had grown 31 per cent over the past year, followed by natural language processing which had grown 27 per cent and PyTorch skills grew 15 per cent.

LinkedIn had recorded a 62 per cent increase in the number of workers adding AI skills to their profile over the past five years.

The Recruitment Consulting and Staff Association said it believed AI credentials commanded between a 10 to 15 per cent premium over those without, and that there was the potential to be as much as 20 per cent more.

Chief executive Charles Cameron said during generational shifts such as the UX (user experience) era, the RCSA saw salaries almost double.

“We’re not seeing that yet, but as demand increases and AI goes even more mainstream in the business world, the salary spike could be exacerbated in an already very talent-short market,” Mr Cameron said.

The RCSA anticipates that companies may soon provide pay rises to workers who already have AI skills in a bid to prevent them from looking elsewhere.

“At the moment these people are seen as ‘unicorns’; they are a rare find and are being well compensated for it. They save an employer from having to hire an AI professional. They are much more than a one-trick pony,” Mr Cameron said.

“The thought is that this will shift in the next 12 to 18 months. By then, the salaries should start to come back down again because candidates will be expected to have acquired AI skills.”

Workers with AI skills are considered ‘unicorns’.

On jobs platforms, roles requiring AI skills varied greatly, with some wanting direct technical expertise while others wanted workers who were familiar with platforms ChatGPT, Bard and Midjourney.

One role posted on Seek which sought a professor in artificial intelligence to work at the University of New England offered a salary range of between $150,646 to $193,686 per year, 17 per cent superannuation, four weeks’ leave, a Christmas shutdown period and relocation assistance.

Another role, also posted on Seek, offered between $75,000 to $90,000 for a content marketing manager at digital recruitment agency S2M who could “use ChatGPT and AI tools to your advantage for incredible content creation and processes”.

Meanwhile, a remote or Perth-based search engine optimisation (SEO) manager role at Perceptiv Digital, which listed “outstanding ability to think creatively, strategically and identify and resolve problems (chatGPT, new tools testing etc)” as a “professional competency”, was offering between $80,000 to $110,000 with an annual bonus.

Salesforce data found 58 per cent of workers were already using generative AI at work and there was a take-up rate of 71 per cent among marketers.

About 83 per cent of marketers say generative AI will transform the skills they need at work and 64 per cent are concerned they will lose their job if they don’t learn to use the technology, according to Salesforce.

Seek returned 273 results when searched for artificial intelligence roles across Australia.

Indeed returned a slightly larger result at 333 roles and Jora returned 50 pages with 1786 results when searched for roles with “AI” as a keyword.

Australia’s AI talent pool has grew 527 per cent between 2016 and 2022. Picture: iStock

On Indeed, the number of jobs on the platform in the first half of this year with a mention of machine learning, generative AI or ChatGPT was just 0.5 per cent – down from 0.8 per cent at the same time last year.

However, that decrease is likely to be attributable to a slowing or hiring in the tech sector, said Indeed senior economist Callam Pickering.

“Job creation in the tech sector has softened this year – along with some high-profile job cuts – with postings down more than a quarter since the beginning of the year, and this has impacted the number of jobs in AI as well,” he said.

Originally published as Employers are offering premiums to workers with AI experience on their resumes