A widening divide between staff who’re benefiting from synthetic intelligence and people being left behind is rising as AI use accelerates, in accordance with a worldwide research by PwC. The consultancy’s 2026 World Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey discovered that 64 p.c of staff had used AI at work through the earlier 12 months, up 10 proportion factors from final yr. Day by day use of generative AI elevated from 14 p.c to 22 p.c, whereas 59 p.c count on their use of AI instruments to extend over the approaching yr.
However entry to coaching has moved in the other way. Simply 51 p.c of staff stated that they had entry to the educational and growth sources they wanted, down from 59 p.c a yr earlier. PwC argues that is creating an more and more divided workforce, with workers who already use AI frequently reporting markedly completely different experiences from those that use it much less steadily. Day by day AI customers had been extra assured about their job safety, with 68 p.c saying they felt safe in contrast with 57 p.c of rare customers. They had been additionally 12 proportion factors extra prone to ask for a promotion, 15 factors extra prone to belief senior administration and 21 factors extra prone to be assured of their capacity to be taught new expertise.
The findings are based mostly on responses from 49,364 staff throughout 48 international locations and areas and 29 sectors, collected in Might and June this yr. PwC stated the outcomes had been weighted by age and gender to make them broadly consultant of working populations in every market.
Pete Brown, world workforce chief at PwC, stated employers confronted the problem of creating workers who had been already benefiting from AI with out neglecting the remainder of their workforce. “Staff are underneath rising strain from rising workloads, speedy change and exterior uncertainty,” he stated. “However these utilizing AI day by day are extra assured, extra bold and extra optimistic about their careers and prospects.”
Majority stay in AI ‘engine room’
PwC divided respondents into 4 teams in accordance with the shortage of their expertise and their adoption of AI. The most important, described because the “engine room”, accounts for 56 p.c of staff and includes workers whose expertise are thought of much less scarce and who are usually not far alongside the AI studying curve. Solely two in 5 staff on this group stated that they had entry to the educational and growth sources they wanted.
The remaining teams are “front-runners”, accounting for 14 p.c of staff and mixing scarce expertise with robust AI capabilities; “AI insurgents”, at 18 p.c, who’ve much less scarce expertise however are utilizing AI to ship extra; and “indispensables”, at 11 p.c, who possess scarce expertise however have made much less progress with AI.
PwC stated workers in its engine-room class had been much less prone to be rewarded for utilizing AI, studying new expertise or difficult established methods of working, regardless of making up nearly all of the workforce and finishing up a lot of organisations’ day-to-day work. On the different finish of the spectrum, front-runners had been 33 proportion factors extra prone to ask for a promotion. Nevertheless, their higher confidence might create a retention drawback for employers: 29 p.c stated they had been very or extraordinarily prone to change employer through the subsequent yr.
Monetary and workload pressures improve
The survey additionally factors to broader pressures on staff. Solely a 3rd stated that they had cash left on the finish of the month, a fall of eight proportion factors yr on yr. Virtually three in ten stated that they had considerably much less bargaining energy than three years in the past, rising by one other 10 proportion factors amongst absolutely distant staff.
Financial uncertainty was a higher supply of concern about job safety than AI itself. Some 57 p.c recognized financial volatility as a danger to their jobs, in contrast with 44 p.c who had been involved about AI taking over extra duties.
Workers are additionally reporting a sooner tempo of office change. Amongst those that had skilled change at work, 58 p.c stated there had been extra of it through the previous yr than beforehand, whereas 27 p.c stated fatigue or burnout was limiting their productiveness. 4 in ten staff stated that they had wanted to use new expertise of their jobs to a big or very massive extent through the earlier yr. The determine was greater amongst senior executives, at 51 p.c, and managers, at 46 p.c, in contrast with 29 p.c of non-managers and 38 p.c of entry-level workers.
Brown stated the findings urged the workforce was starting to “transfer at completely different speeds”, with these possessing scarce expertise and robust AI capabilities turning into each extra assured and extra cellular. Employers, he stated, wanted to think about the place they invested in expertise, how workers got alternatives to adapt and the way they retained the capabilities they most wanted.
