Figure of the Month: 16
A new IHS study finds that only around 16% of full-time employees in Germany, so-called “expert workers”, have seen measurable income gains to date. These are workers in complex, knowledge-intensive fields in which AI tends to complement rather than replace work processes.
The study analyzed nearly eight million job advertisements from 2017 to 2023 to track demand for AI skills and linked this information with administrative data. The analysis period largely predates the rise of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and thus represents an early phase when specialized expertise was particularly valuable. The findings suggest: when the share of AI-related job ads doubles, the annual income of these “expert workers” increases by around 400€. Notably, the largest gains are not in traditional IT roles, but in interactive occupations such as sales or consulting. Unlike previous waves of technological change that mainly rewarded analytical professions, AI now seems to benefit those who combine domain expertise with social skills.
Yet, these gains are not universal: for workers in low- or medium-skilled jobs, the picture remains largely unchanged, in some cases there are even slight losses. At the lower end of the income distribution, there are early signs of widening income gaps, which raises concerns about future inequality. While AI’s overall economic impact remains modest for now, one pattern is already evident: the higher the expertise, the greater the reward.
Eduard Storm
IHS Researcher
Head of Junior Research Group Skill Demand during Structural Change
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