It seems that jobs in the UK are split in terms of how well Generative AI is able to accomplish them, according to job site Indeed.
The firm's new 2024 UK Jobs & Hiring Trends Report found that nearly a quarter of UK jobs faced the highest exposure to generative AI, meaning that the technology could perform at least 80% of the skills related to the job in question at a good level. On the other hand, 27% of jobs had the lowest exposure, with GenAI only being able to perform less than half of the required skills at a good level.
The report also found that 0.05% of job listings in the country mention terms related to generative AI. This may sound like a small proportion, but Indeed points out that this is a 26-fold increase since the start of the year. It also sees this figure increasing into next year as organizations continue to adopt such tools.
Disruption verses enhancement
There have been various discussions on whether AI is a force for good or bad when it comes to the job market, with some claiming it will wipe out large swathes of the labor force, while others believe it will boost productivity and free up employees to tackle more meaningful work.
According to Jack Kennedy, Senior UK Economist at Indeed, "the data shows that while GenAI can learn to do some tasks reasonably well, it is unlikely to fully replace many jobs. Instead, as the technology continues to learn skills associated with certain jobs, it will augment or transform some more than others."
Staying true to other recent trends, Indeed also discovered that listings mentioning hybrid or remote working dropped from 16.3% in May to 14.4%. Many prominent firms are starting to recall staff back to the the office, although this has been met with strong resistance in many cases.
However, other research has found that there are plenty of businesses out there that want to maintain hybrid working arrangements on a permanent basis, with 89% investing in technology to support hybrid working.
Job seekers still remain keen to find jobs offering remote and hybrid conditions too, with Indeed finding that searches for these jobs have risen tenfold since before the pandemic. However, the share of such searches has dipped slightly, down to 2.5% in October from 3% in early 2023, which was the peak.
As a way for recruiters to entice more workers into the office, more are starting to offer four-day work weeks as a compromise of sorts. Listings mentioning this have been rising, but they still only account for 0.8% in total. But interestingly, it is the least remote-friendly jobs that are offering truncated working weeks the most (1%), while only 0.5%-0.7% of remote positions are offering the same terms.
