AI has already added 1.3 million new jobs, according to LinkedIn data

Contrary to popular narratives, the labour market hasn’t retreated in the way many headlines suggest. In fact, we’re seeing the labour market rotate toward a new era of work. A new report on the global labour market from LinkedIn, titled Building a Future of Work That Works, shows we are seeing a slowdown in global hiring, hanging nearly 20% below pre-pandemic levels, largely due to economic uncertainty and monetary policy shifts.

Ongoing sluggish hiring set up a labour market dynamic characterized by a restless, underutilized global workforce as just over half (52%) of people say they’re job hunting in 2026, while nearly 80% feel unprepared to find a new job.

At the same time, the data points to labour market growth rotating toward the current wave of AI investment.

While there is evidence that AI is impacting jobs in small pockets, it’s also creating demand at scale – including more than 600,000 new, AI-enabled data centre jobs and 1.3 million new roles like AI Engineers, Forward-Deployed Engineers and Data Annotators. Additionally, AI Engineer is one of the fastest‑growing jobs on LinkedIn over the past three years, reflecting sustained demand for AI-centric roles ranging from Directors of AI to Machine Learning Researchers. This mix of uneven hiring and AI-driven job creation marks the emergence of the new-collar era, a workforce that blends knowledge work, advanced technical skills and distinctly human strengths.

The message for business leaders is clear: macro volatility isn’t eliminating opportunity – it’s shifting it. As skills evolve and new roles continue to emerge, here are some of the key trends shaping the labour market in 2026:

According to LinkedIn’s Executive Confidence Index, business‑leader confidence continues to fall across advanced economies, creating a tense backdrop for a workforce that feels restless and underutilized.

According to our data, the pressure is concentrated in advanced economies, where hiring remains 20-35% below pre-pandemic levels, with emerging markets like India (+40%) and UAE (+37%) showing continued momentum.

However, despite widespread assumptions, AI isn’t driving the hiring slowdown – economic uncertainty, monetary policy shifts and post-pandemic hiring rebalancing are the biggest culprits. In fact, outside of clinical healthcare roles, hiring patterns look the same for jobs with high AI exposure and those with low exposure.

These trends also hold true for the hiring slowdown seen among entry level workers. While we’ve seen a decline in the share of entry level roles over the last three years, the current rates have largely returned to historical norms. These labour market dynamics have placed leaders in a unique position: job seekers are outpacing openings at the highest level since the pandemic, making this an ideal moment to rethink talent strategies and use AI‑powered tools to accelerate hiring and build pipelines for critical new roles.

With AI embedded in nearly every job function, the skills landscape is transforming quickly, driving a 70% year‑over‑year increase in US roles that require AI literacy. And this demand is expanding well beyond employer expectations; 53% of US employees said they plan to proactively learn new AI skills within the next six months and 48% believe these skills will help them grow in their career. We’re seeing similar increases across LinkedIn with a 92% year-over-year increase in the share of learning time spent watching AI-related courses and a 66% year-over-year increase in posts on our platform about AI-related topics.

As AI literacy is now a baseline requirement across many roles, employers are placing even greater value on human capabilities like empathy and personal connection. The real advantage comes from a workforce that blends AI fluency with these uniquely human strengths. To be successful in the current labour market, leaders should make upskilling a core part of their talent strategy to help employees develop the skills needed to thrive in an AI-enabled world of work.

AI is accelerating the rise of new‑collar work: the global economy added 1.3 million new AI‑related jobs in just two years, while demand for AI Engineers and data‑centric roles continues to dominate hiring. As demand for AI-engineers continues, it’s fuelling new cross-border competition for this talent as well as highly global teams. Furthermore, the surge in Head of AI positions across Australia, Canada, India, Germany, the UK and the US reflects a decisive move toward embedded AI strategy and leadership. These roles require a blend of technical fluency and human adaptability – and they are fast becoming essential infrastructure for competitive organizations.

This labour market shift is mirrored in worker behavior. Across major economies, more than half of professionals now prefer trade‑based paths over corporate jobs. Among Gen Z, this preference is even stronger, with nearly 60% viewing technical trades as more meaningful career options. Combined, these data points show a workforce pivoting toward hands-on, skill‑based work as AI continues to redefine job creation and job choice.

When you look at the data holistically, four focus areas for leaders emerge:

1. Even in a slower hiring market, competition for business-critical roles will continue to grow as the new-collar era takes shape. As a result, leaders should rethink how they find and deploy talent by expanding candidate pools, creating global teams and using new AI-powered tools.

2. As resumes become easier to embellish and skills evolve rapidly, leaders must verify real capability beyond titles and tenure to assess role fit.

3. At the same time, new AI-driven roles are forming, opening up broader pathways to economic opportunity and making change management essential for executives to lead their teams as they adapt to the evolving world of work.

4. Underpinning it all is upskilling: digital and data literacy are now foundational across nearly every function, and establishing AI fluency as a core competency will be critical to building resilient, competitive organizations.

For leaders, acting now by upskilling employees and equipping them with the right AI tools to succeed in the new-collar era is how we build a resilient workforce ready for what’s next.