AI bolstering jobs, productivity and wages, says PwC
Published:Wednesday | June 18, 2025 | 12:10 AMCorey Robinson/Senior Staff Reporter
Artificial intelligence (AI) is creating more meaningful jobs, bolstering productivity, and increasing wages worldwide, according to a 2025 Global AI jobs study by Pricewaterhousecoopers (PwC), but there are fears Jamaica and the Caribbean region are not keeping up to pace.
Dubbed ‘The Fearless Future: 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer’, the study canvassed close to one billion job advertisements and data from AI-exposed companies from across the world. It examined how the rapid transformation in AI is affecting jobs, and found that since 2022, productivity growth in AI-exposed companies has quadrupled.
It also found that industries most exposed to AI saw a three-times-higher growth in revenue per employee compared to those least exposed; wages in AI-exposed industries are rising twice as fast as others with a 56 per cent wage premium for AI-skilled roles, and increased from 25 per cent last year; and that employer demand for skills is evolving 66 per cent faster in AI-exposed jobs, making workforce adaptability a top priority.
Adrian Tait, consulting leader at PwC Jamaica, said such information underscores the immense opportunities available for Jamaica and the wider Caribbean community, but noted, as the study suggests, that regional companies should treat AI as a growth strategy, prioritise AI to multiply output and enhance human thinking, and invest in AI skills.
They should also focus on building trust, through responsible usage of artificial intelligence, the researchers noted.
“While the level of adoption of AI locally is not as high as our larger countries that would have participated in the survey, it certainly provides an insight into what’s likely to happen in our jurisdiction as well. I see it more from a perspective of not what’s happening here, but what we can expect to happen,” he said, debunking concerns about AI being a wholesale replacement of jobs.
ADOPTING TO AI
“It’s really been an augmentation of productivity and an expansion of very specific roles ... . It means that in order to ensure that we are not left behind, I think, probably, the pace of adoption would need to be increased,” charged Tait, noting that, like with past technological innovations, AI demands that companies adopt.
The study urges companies to reskill their employees at speed and build trust as AI depends on strong governance. It comes as a catalyst for the African-Caribbean Hub for Generative Artificial Intelligence Development, launched last week by The University of the West Indies (UWI) and the PJ Patterson Institute for Africa-Caribbean Advocacy.
That initiative is aimed at building and strengthening AI research and development in both Africa and the Caribbean. Fundamentally, it is aimed at economic integration, technological development, resources, sustainability and governance, social inclusion, and policy and advocacy. The official rollout of the initiative will follow a two-year pilot study.
“First thing we are interested in doing is looking at the development of the technology itself, the extent to which it is reflective of the needs of the environment that it is trying to create value in,” Gladstone Hutchinson, professor of economics at The UWI, said at the launch while noting that the regions need to chart their own destinies with regard to their AI future.