Are You Considering Paying Premiums for AI Skills? Read This First.

Workers who have the right artificial intelligence (AI) skills or training — and apply them in the right place, at the right moment — may earn a pretty penny in today’s hiring landscape.

Some organizations are paying a premium to lure such workers. The nine-figure bonuses pledged to top AI engineers certainly catch the eye, but there’s plenty more of this trend across roles and industries beyond those outliers. For example, compensation data firm J. Thelander Consulting found technology companies — especially startups — are paying premiums of up to $200,000 for data scientists and analysts trained in machine learning.

Recent job postings across a broad range of industries that mention at least one AI skill list 28% higher salaries than comparable jobs without those skills, averaging premiums of almost $18,000 a year, according to a report from labor market analytics company Lightcast. That premium increases to 43% for listings mentioning at least two AI skills.

This article shares considerations for employers when deciding how to compensate workers for highly sought-after skill sets, including those tied to AI.

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What AI Skills are Employers Pursuing?

By analyzing more than 1 billion job postings, Lightcast found in its report that among employers seeking AI-fluent workers, 10 leading skills emerged — and only two of them (AI and machine learning) are actually related to the technology.

The other leading skills? Communication, management, operations, leadership, research, customer service, writing and problem-solving. And beyond those top-10 skills, AI job listings outlined hundreds more.

That’s because organizations are still identifying the AI-related skills that are needed to progress their unique goals — and that moving target makes compensating for these skills complicated, said Ron Seifert, the North America total rewards leader at consulting firm Korn Ferry.

To start, he said, employers should ask themselves:

• What is the skill your organization needs?
• How does it fit into your organization and make it better?
• How do you integrate it in a large-scale way?
• How do you measure it?
• Then, and only then, consider, what is it worth to you?

"Possessing the skill adds no value on its own — it’s the application of that skill to deliver differentiated performance that companies will pay for.”
— Ron Seifert, North America total rewards leader, Korn Ferry

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How Organizations Are Compensating for AI Skills

In their hurry to secure leading talent to fill AI roles, some organizations are building salary premiums for those workers into base pay — which was generally the case for the job postings Lightcast examined, said Cole Napper, the company’s vice president of research, innovation and talent insights.

“In the short term, wages are going to continue to go up because you’re probably not going to see an external increase in supply that is exponential enough to meet the exponential increase in demand,” he said.

But Seifert cautioned against using AI skills to influence base salary, urging employers to instead explore variable-pay compensation structures. Options outlined by Korn Ferry include:

• Single bonuses based on the completion of AI certifications or training programs
• Periodic bonuses calculated as a percentage of base pay
• Equity vesting over several years (which also carries an additional retention benefit)

According to Seifert, structuring AI premiums in this way, as opposed to building them into base pay, helps employers avoid:

• Substantial salary gaps between workers with otherwise similar roles;
• Pay transparency and salary disclosure challenges; and,
• The possibility of artificially inflating the value of a role and eventually needing to increase all salaries proportionately as the skills become more ubiquitous.

Variable compensation structures come down to paying not just for AI skills but for their outcomes, Seifert said — which, along with the skills themselves, organizations need to identify and explicitly articulate to make them measurable.

“Variable pay is where you’ll see the distinction,” he said. “How you pay [AI-trained employees], and how much they can earn, may differ significantly because of the uniqueness of their capabilities and their ability to outperform others. Possessing the skill adds no value on its own — it’s the application of that skill to deliver differentiated performance that companies will pay for.”

Shifting Valuation of Other Skills

While AI skills are rising through the pay ranks, other highly compensated, technical skills may begin to lose their edge — with soft skills filling the gap and becoming increasingly valued.

A recent Stanford study juxtaposed the average 2024 wage and the “required human agency” of certain skills, with interesting discrepancies suggesting the possibility of near-future compensation shifts. The findings included:

• Analyzing data or information, ranked highest in wages, required below-average human agency.
• Process monitoring, also a highly paid skill, ranked just average for human agency.
• Training and teaching others pulled a below-average wage but had one of the highest human agency requirements. Assisting and caring for others also ranked far higher in human agency than wage.
• Organizing, planning and prioritizing work, the highest-ranked skill for human agency, was just slightly above average in pay.

That may change soon: 60% of hiring decision-makers said soft skills are a greater priority in hiring now than they were five years ago, according to a report from talent sourcing company TestGorilla — and 78% had hired an individual with strong technical skills who did not succeed in the role because they lacked soft skills.

Lightcast’s Napper noted another skills shift taking place today: “For the first time in history, we’re seeing that there’s potentially an over-supply of college-educated workers and an under-supply of service-sector, blue-collar skilled workers — and that inversion is going on at the same time that AI has been entered into the equation.”

For instance, he said someone who’s certified as a truck driver (by obtaining a commercial driver’s license) can likely be hired quickly and paid well, but a job opening for a Fortune 500 data analyst may receive thousands of applications in the first half-hour because AI has lowered the barrier to entry for that role, inflating supply and knocking down wages.

But what about the individuals currently working in data analysis and process monitoring roles?

“For [those people], the question will be, have they repurposed themselves, and are they adding value in a different way by leveraging AI platforms?” Seifert said. “Because somebody has to teach the platform to do that task. To be nuanced to the company’s culture and individual models, you have to teach the AI system how to work. Those are the folks who will maintain their value.”

Editor’s Note: Additional Content

For more information and resources related to this article, see the pages below, which offer quick access to all WorldatWork content on these topics:

• Employee Compensation
• Finance and Budgeting
• Organizational Performance
• Total Rewards