Skills or degree? The rise of skill-based hiring for AI and green jobs
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21402242 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Matthew Bone (Corning Museum of Glass), Eugenia González Ehlinger, Fabian Stephany (0000-0002-0713-6010, Bruegel, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 214 |
| Pages | 124042 |
| Publication date | 2025-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Technological Forecasting and Social Change (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0040-1625 • E-ISSN: 1873-5509 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.techfore.2025.124042 |
| OpenAlex | W4407964516 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 28 |
Emerging professions in fields like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and sustainability (green jobs) are experiencing labour shortages as industry demand outpaces labour supply. In this context, our study aims to understand whether employers have begun focusing more on individual skills rather than formal qualifications in their recruitment processes. We analysed a large time-series dataset of approximately eleven million online job vacancies in the UK from 2018 to mid-2024, drawing on diverse literature on technological change and labour market signalling. Our findings provide evidence that employers have initiated “skill-based hiring” for AI roles, adopting more flexible hiring practices to expand the available talent pool. From 2018 to 2023, demand for AI roles grew by 21 % as a proportion of all postings (and accelerated into 2024). Simultaneously, mentions of university education requirements for AI roles declined by 15 %. Our regression analysis shows that university degrees have a significantly lower wage premium for both AI and green roles. In contrast, AI skills command a wage premium of 23 %, exceeding the value of degrees up until the PhD-level (33 %). In occupations with high demand for AI skills, the premium for skills is high, and the reward for degrees is relatively low. We recommend leveraging alternative skill-building formats such as apprenticeships , on-the-job training, MOOCs , vocational education and training, micro-certificates, and online bootcamps to fully utilise human capital and address talent shortages
Business · Degree (music) · Economics · Labour economics · Operations management · Physics · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Employment and Welfare Studies · Labor market dynamics and wage inequality · Psychology
Engineering Education at the Intersection of Knowledge, Work, and Power
Apprenticeship as social leveller? A critical exploration of vocational pathways through a social justice lens
Psychometric validation of the ‘ChatGPT acceptance and use scale’ (AUS-GPT), and comparative analysis of its adoption among Mexican higher education students (2023-2025)
Semantic reconfiguration of AI skill taxonomies after ChatGPT
Lost highway
Who is transitioning to green? Introducing a text-based indicator to measure green skill transferability
Green Talent, Greener Outcomes? The Role of Governance in Translating Green Hiring into Substantive Environmental Action
Generative Artificial Intelligence in Marketing Communication
Artificial intelligence exposure and labor market transformations in Latin America
AI adoption in healthcare organizations
The Credential Society
Skills, Tasks and Technologies
How Computers Have Changed the Wage Structure
Artificial Intelligence in Education
Explaining Job Polarization
What can machine learning do? Workforce implications
Skills, education, and the rise of earnings inequality among the “other 99 percent”
The Skill Content of Recent Technological Change
The future of employment
Human Capital
Artificial Intelligence and Jobs
Jobs Interventions for Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons
Upskilling
Measures, drivers and effects of green employment
The effects of education and cognitive skill on earnings
The end of the credential society? An analysis of the relationship between education and the labour market using big data
We Can Work It Out
Wage Inequality and the Rise in Returns to Skill
The Growth of Low-Skill Service Jobs and the Polarization of the US Labor Market
Automation and New Tasks
Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation
The Introduction of Human Capital Theory into Education Policy in the United States
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 10 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |