Dive Brief:
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The lifespan of IT skills is growing shorter as CIOs scramble to modernize toolsets in the midst of rapid AI deployment efforts, according to a report published Tuesday by tech talent firm Draup.
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By 2027, more than 40% of IT skills will be rendered partially obsolete, according to the firm's report. The company attributes the shift to AI adoption within IT departments, as well as the increasing consolidation of roles and skill sets.
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“We’re not seeing tech jobs disappear outright, but the way work gets done is certainly changing,” Vishnu Shankar, VP of data and platform at Draup, said in a press release accompanying the report. “AI is compressing skill cycles, reshaping roles and shifting where productivity comes from faster than most organizations expect.”
Dive Insight:
Tech executives spent much of last year fine-tuning their approach to talent attraction and development. Changes in job categories amid AI adoption gave urgency to this task as companies responded to change.
The job market, too, reflected this shuffle. Demand for broader categories of tech talent remained flat while postings for AI-specific roles skyrocketed.
As companies infuse processes with newer tools — with software development serving as an early example — human-only tasks are shrinking, while AI-led and human–machine collaboration spreads across engineering, according to Draup.
The change is not expected to shrink headcount growth, the company expects. Instead, AI adoption will help drive a net expansion of 78 million jobs by the end of the decade.
But AI will leave its mark. A recent Forrester analysis found that AI adoption will lead to some job loss in the U.S. — the analyst firm said AI will likely trim 6% of U.S. jobs by 2030. Generative and agentic AI will jointly contribute to the elimination of 10.4 million jobs by the end of the decade, according to Forrester.
"In the next five years, the future of work will remain largely human," J.P. Gownder, VP and principal analyst at Forrester, said in a Tuesday blog post highlighting the research. "AI will take over increasing numbers of workflows and tasks, but workflows and tasks aren’t jobs. Your strategy must invest in the people who use AI to improve their productivity and employee experience."
