In-Demand Skills 2026: A Market View of Skills Demand in an AI Economy

By Teng Liu, Takeshi Matsuda, and Gabby Burlacu 

Executive Summary

As businesses transition from piloting AI agents to strategically embedding them across systems and processes, questions about their impact on work remain unresolved. Drawing on real market data across six broad categories of work, this report reveals how work is evolving not in theory, but in practice, as AI is integrated into a workforce that 77% of business leaders agree is becoming more fractional by design.

Key findings:

• The need for in-demand skills remains stable. The most sought-after skills — including full stack development, general virtual assistance, data analytics, and graphic design — have remained consistent year over year, signaling that even as AI capabilities are enhanced, businesses continue to hire human talent at scale.
• Growth is concentrated in applying AI within existing work. Skills that explicitly reference AI grew 109% year over year. Demand is surging across familiar creative and technical workflows, including AI video generation and editing (+329%), AI integration (+178%), and AI image generation and editing (+95%), alongside rising need for specialist work like data annotation and labeling (+154%) and AI chatbot development (+71%). Together, this shows businesses are embedding AI into established disciplines while still relying on skilled professionals for domain expertise.
• Human capabilities continue to command a premium. Survey data shows skilled talent, not AI, is top of mind for business leaders. Nearly one in two leaders say they would pay a premium for creativity and innovation, highlighting the growing market value of uniquely human skills as the adoption of AI accelerates.

Taken together, these findings challenge the narrative that AI will replace broad categories of work. Instead, companies continue to demonstrate strong demand for skilled people, even as the nature of their work evolves. The findings point to recomposition, not widespread job replacement, and provide a roadmap for how businesses and workers can adapt as AI skills augment rather than replace existing roles. 

AI Is Here, and Ready To Work 

If 2025 marked the emergence of AI agents, 2026 will be the year they are operationalized. As a result, conversations about workforce skills are now inseparable from debates about AI’s capabilities and its impact on human work. While AI agents bring promise of increased efficiency, their use has intensified a question that first arose with ChatGPT’s launch in 2022: what happens to people?

On the one hand, some research suggests that change is the inevitable outcome.The World Economic Forum estimates that 39% of workers’ skills will be transformed or become redundant by 2030. And although only a small share of complex tasks can be fully automated by today’s AI, it is already reshaping how work gets done — augmenting roles, altering workflows, and requiring new ways of working. 

On the other hand, concerns about job displacement are rising: over half of global business leaders expect AI to eliminate significant numbers of jobs, with entry-level roles already seeing notable declines. And Microsoft research has identified 40 roles that, over the longer term, are particularly susceptible to AI disruption: data scientists, editors, historians, and teachers are all at risk of AI exposure and automation. 

A reality check is desperately needed in this conversation. In this sixth annual In-Demand Skills report, we aim to provide clarity around demand for skills and work at a time of rapid AI advancement. We surveyed hundreds of business leaders and analyzed freelancer hiring data from January to December 2025 to provide a market view of what businesses are actually hiring for as AI joins the workforce. 

Here’s what we learned: 

• Businesses are adjusting their work models. Seventy seven percent of business leaders say AI is increasing their company’s need for fractional talent who bring specific, specialized skillsets, as opposed to the broader scope of traditional full-time roles.¹ This means that hiring data specific to these skillsets within fractional and independent talent pools is a strong signal for where organizations are headed, and how they view the role of people and skills in an AI-driven economy. 
• There is growing demand for people who can work alongside AI, but at this stage of the development of AI, businesses are still hiring and paying for the same core work, while new AI skills emerge as an overlay, not a replacement. Demand for skilled people hasn’t disappeared; it’s being recomposed, with strong evidence that the need for human talent endures in a future of work that is broadly influenced by AI.

Core Work Is Not a Receding Wave, It’s the Ocean 

AI is changing many aspects of work, but it isn’t changing everything. We see strong signals that companies continue to need the kinds of work that they needed prior to the launch of ChatGPT. Specifically, the skills companies are investing the most in are little changed year over year (see Figure 1). 

Within the major categories of work we explored, the majority of the top 10 most-demanded skills have stayed consistent. Companies are still hiring people, at scale, to do things like boost SEO or generate leads. People are still driving corporate video editing and logo design. And human-led data entry and analytics are still a part of organizational strategies. 

Importantly, we see significant hiring volume even for skills that were supposedly ripe for AI automation. For example, AI capabilities around “vibe coding” have not replaced the need to hire freelancers for web design and development. And AI-driven image- and video-generation tools have not decreased demand for video editing, image editing, or illustration skills. 

Figure 1.

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Demand for AI Is Integrated, Not Isolated 

Within each of the six broad categories of work explored in our research, we identified the fastest growing skills — not necessarily those that drove the most hiring volume, but those that showed rapid growth in demand over the twelve months in our dataset. Three of these categories contain rapidly growing skills that directly specify an application of AI, while the rest may contain an AI component but do not call it out directly (see Figure 2). 

For instance, AI video generation and editing experienced a 329% boost in demand year over year. Demand for AI annotation and data labeling, a critical entry point into AI integration, grew 154% in the same time period. And while all of these skills are high growth, demand for the skills explicitly mentioning AI grew by 109%, versus 23% year-over-year for the remaining skills. 

Figure 2.

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We’ve previously noted how quickly AI has moved beyond purely technical domains into non-technical work such as writing and creative design. Today, “AI work” is less about building AI tools and more about embedding those tools into existing disciplines. On the Upwork platform, new AI-related contracts are awarded each month to independent professionals with skills in areas like video editing, coding, and web design.² 

Consistent with this shift, the fastest-growing skills shown in Figure 2 largely reflect the application of AI within established fields.

Human Skills Are Foundational, Not Replaceable 

Fears of AI-driven job displacement are often based on the assumption that business leaders see AI as a substitute for people. However, the Upwork Research Institute surveys from 2025 challenge this view. In every quarter of that year, companies ranked talent acquisition and retention as their top strategic priority, consistently ahead of innovation and technology adoption.³

When we asked leaders about their biggest challenges, they pointed not to keeping pace with technology, but to skill gaps and declining productivity amid a macroeconomic environment that 53% described as “challenging.” Reflecting this, talent recruitment and sourcing is the fastest-growing consulting skillset (see Figure 2), which suggests that finding skilled people — not replacing them with AI — is the priority.

Our data suggests that, as 92% of business leaders plan to expand their company’s use of AI agents in the coming year, five workforce skills have emerged as particularly critical (see Figure 3). Notably, workers who are adaptable and agile learners are in slightly higher demand than those who can build or understand AI tools; reliability and creative problem-solving are also highly sought after.

Figure 3.

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These uniquely human skillsets have real value for organizations. Specifically, 47% of business leaders say they would pay a premium to work with independent talent that is innovative; 45% would pay more to work with talent that is creative. 

Even as AI agents take on more work, human skills remain essential. Upwork’s Human+AI Productivity Index shows that while even advanced agents complete simple tasks at limited rates, performance improves significantly when people are involved — and improves further when human input is layered in multiple times and in ways that allow judgment, creativity, and analytical thinking to enhance agent outcomes.

The Evidence Strongly Suggests a Human+AI Future 

Taken together, these findings indicate that AI skills are reshaping existing roles rather than replacing them, pointing to job recomposition instead of mass displacement in today’s labor market. Businesses are still paying for people to perform the same core work — from accounting and recruiting to development, design, marketing, and operations. What’s changing is not whether the work exists, but how it gets done. 

These findings point to a critical concept that is largely missing from today’s AI versus skills debate: sociomateriality. Sociomateriality holds that technology and tools shape outcomes through the contexts in which they are used. AI is often framed as a force that unilaterally reshapes work, but its real impact is inseparable from the people who use it, the organizations that deploy it, and the policies that govern it. 

While research has shown that AI can perform a substantial share of work tasks in isolation, the environments AI agents are actually entering are complex, human-centered systems in which judgment, context, and uniquely human skills remain essential. As AI continues to be improved and its capabilities increasingly overlap with our own, the future of work will not be defined by the absence of people, but by their amplification.

What does this mean for freelancers? Your area of expertise or passion is not disappearing, but the way you deliver value to organizations will likely change as demand for AI skills grows. Focus your efforts to upskill with AI on the models, tools, and outputs that optimize the work you already do, versus pursuing AI training that is broad or generic. Consider how you’ll build and demonstrate your uniquely human skills such as creativity, innovative thinking, and adaptability. 

Figure 4.

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What does this mean for businesses? Implementing AI only for the sake of having it or keeping pace with competitors will not work within today’s work landscape. AI strategies should layer on top of more foundational work strategies, driving adoption of AI tools only if they are integrated within the context of improving the productivity, performance, and experiences of your people. 

^{1. Upwork survey research conducted in October 2025, n=349 business leaders}

^{2. Refers to Upwork’s Monthly Hiring Reports tracking the most in-demand skills for AI work, based on contract starts each month. Specific skills are subject to change.}

^{3. Refers to Upwork Research Institute business leader pulse surveys. Stats presented reflect the latest wave, conducted December 2025}

Methodology

​​Skills data was sourced from the Upwork Marketplace and is based on freelancer earnings across six work categories from January 1, 2025, to December 31, 2025, with demand originating in the United States. To ensure a strong signal of demand, only contracted  jobs are analyzed. Top skills represent the fastest growing skills within the categories presented, and each skill had a minimum of $100,000 aggregate freelancer earnings in that category during the period. Year-over-year growth was estimated by comparing freelancer earnings in 2025 to freelancer earnings over the same period in 2024. To compare the growth of AI and non-AI skills, skills that explicitly reference AI (AI Integration, AI Chatbot Development, AI Video Generation & Editing, AI Image Generation & Editing, AI Data Annotation & Labeling, Generative AI Modeling) were grouped together and analyzed for year-over-year growth.

About the Authors

Dr. Teng Liu

Dr. Teng Liu is an Economist at Upwork, where he studies how AI and technological change are transforming the labor market and reshaping skill demand. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and specializes in labor market dynamics and quantitative research. His work informs Upwork’s insights on workforce shifts, economic opportunity, and policy.

Takeshi Matsuda 

Takeshi Matsuda is a Research Analyst at Upwork, focusing on how technological progress is reshaping the landscape of work and skills. He holds a B.Sc. in quantitative economics and data science from Beloit College, with research interests in behavioral economics and labor markets. His work contributes to Upwork’s research on evolving workforce dynamics and the future of work.

Dr. Gabby Burlacu

Dr. Gabby Burlacu is Senior Research Manager at Upwork, where she studies how organizations are adjusting their cultures and talent practices to access skilled talent in a rapidly evolving world of work. Her research has been featured in a variety of peer-reviewed studies, articles, book chapters, and media outlets, and has informed strategy and technology development across a range of Fortune 500 companies. Gabby holds a Ph. D. in industrial-organizational psychology from Portland State University.

About The Upwork Research Institute 

The world of work is not the same as it was just a few years ago, and leaders are facing brand new challenges as a result. The old work playbook is gone, and in its place, there are debates and decisions around workforce location, worker arrangements, and flexibility. However, leaders do not need to navigate this new world of work on their own.

The Upwork Research Institute is committed to studying the fundamental shifts in the workforce and providing business leaders with the tools and insights they need to navigate the here and now while preparing their organization for the future. Using our proprietary platform data, global survey research, partnerships, and academic collaborations, we will produce evidence-based insights to create the blueprint for the new way of work.

Acknowledgements 

The Upwork Research Institute would like to thank Christine (Kim) Lee, Becca Carne, and Rachel Draelos for their contributions to this research report.