Generative-AI and the transformation of workforce. A job postings-driven analysis

TL;DR

This study analyzes over 150,000 job postings from 2018 to 2025 to understand how generative AI is transforming skills and job requirements across sectors, revealing a shift towards hybrid human-AI competencies.

Contribution

It introduces a data-driven, replicable methodology for mapping AI-related skill diffusion in labor markets using advanced NLP and statistical techniques.

Findings

Sharp increase in AI-related skills post-2021, such as prompt engineering.

Decline in routine tasks like data entry and manual coding.

Forecasts indicate continued growth in AI_Data and Soft_Meta skills through 2025.

Abstract

This paper investigates how generative-artificial intelligence AI is reshaping job requirements, skill compositions and sectoral dynamics across global labor markets. It examines the evolving frequency and framing of AI-related competencies in job postings, exploring whether generative-AI functions primarily as an augmentative or substitutive force in the workplace. A large-scale, multi-source corpus of over 150,000 English-language job postings 2018-2025 is compiled from twelve open-access datasets and one public API. The analytical framework integrates lexical skill extraction, semantic framing, topic modeling, BERTopic, LDA, KMeans, and time-series forecasting ARIMA. Skill mentions are categorized into five dimensions: AI_Data, Routine, Soft_Meta, Domain_Specific and Leadership, while cross sectoral analyses and correlation matrices quantify interdependencies between competencies. Sentence-transformer embeddings and cosine similarity are used to compute a Framing Index, distinguishing augmentation- versus automation-oriented discourse. Investigating job postings, our research contributes a replicable, data driven methodology for mapping the diffusion of AI related skills across industries and time. Results reveal a sharp post-2021 increase in AI-related skill mentions: prompt engineering, fine-tuning and model validation, accompanied by a decline in routine tasks: data entry and manual coding. Forecasts suggest sustained growth in AI_Data and Soft_Meta skills through 2025, signaling a structural convergence toward hybrid human-AI expertise as a new foundation of employability.