LinkedIn data reveals who really wins in AI hiring
Millennial men with degrees dominate top AI pay, while women get sidelined into entry-level roles
Head of AI roles now pay a median salary of $236,000, and new LinkedIn research shows exactly who's landing them: mostly millennial men with a bachelor's degree or higher. Everyone else is largely watching from the sidelines of one of the fastest-growing job categories in tech.
LinkedIn analysed hiring data across its platform to map the 12 fastest-growing AI jobs and who's filling them.
AI heads and technical AI workers between the ages of 30 and 45 account for 60% and 56%, respectively, meaning that millennials are definitely the biggest monetary beneficiaries of the current AI hiring boom. It is estimated that the median pay in AI jobs amounts to $177,000, which is twice as much as the $80,000 median of non-AI jobs.
The gender split tells a starker story. Women account for just 20% of head of AI hires, 26% of director of AI hires, and 18% of technical staff hires, leaving them concentrated instead in lower-paying, lower-barrier roles like data annotation.
This is how LinkedIn’s report presents the trend. The company explains that in terms of labour market opportunities, AI is becoming more and more credentialist in nature, as opposed to welcoming newbies into the field.
The majority of people hired for Head of AI, Director of AI, and other technical roles have at least a bachelor’s degree despite the fact that corporations like Google and Apple have stopped requiring degrees in other areas.
The LinkedIn statistics show that this credentialism pays off by around $52,000 per year.
Gen Z, meanwhile, is facing the worst entry-level job market in 37 years, with 22-to-27-year-olds posting a 7.2% unemployment rate in June against a 4.1% overall rate.
AI hiring is one of the few bright spots: Gen Z makes up more than two-thirds of new hires for forward-deployed engineer and AI engineer roles, which pay median salaries of $199,000 and $166,000.
