AI is named in one in six British job adverts. The pay attached to it is going down.

Take the market's own numbers first, then argue about what they mean.

ITJobsWatch tracks the wording of British job advertisements. In the six months to mid-January 2026, 9,498 permanent vacancies mentioned artificial intelligence. That is 15.57% of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK, against 4.83% in the same period a year earlier and 4.19% the year before that. In two years the skill has gone from a specialism named in one advert in twenty-four to one named in one in six.

Now the price. Over those same six months, the median salary quoted in adverts citing AI was £71,000, down 7.79% on the year. Outside London it was £59,450, down 15.07%. The regional picture is sharper still: the South East down 33%, the East of England down 35%, the East Midlands down nearly 45%. Some places went the other way, with the West Midlands, Yorkshire and Scotland all up between 11% and 14%.

The obvious reading is commoditisation. A scarce skill commands a premium. A universal one becomes a condition of entry, and the value quietly moves from the salary line into the job description, where it costs the employer nothing.

There is a second reading and any honest account has to put it next to the first. Median salaries can fall because the mix of jobs changes, not because anyone's pay was cut. If AI is now mentioned in advertisements for roles that never mentioned it before, and many of those roles are junior or administrative, the median falls by composition alone. Nobody is worse off; the category simply got broader. Given that the share of adverts naming AI has more than tripled, this is not a footnote. It may be most of the effect.

Two cautions on the data. It covers advertised permanent vacancies, weighted towards technology roles, so it is a slice of the labour market rather than the whole of it. And the window closes in mid-January, which makes it six months old.

A counterweight from a different direction. Employment Hero's survey of 3,500 UK employers and workers found that businesses with AI at the centre of their operations were more likely to be hiring at entry level, 62% having increased junior headcount over two years against 30% of non-adopters, and roughly a quarter of UK business leaders expecting AI to increase the need for entry-level roles. It is research published by a company selling workforce software, and it measures intent and recollection rather than payroll. It still points the opposite way to the gloom, and it should be weighed.

Why it matters here. Both readings lead to the same policy problem. If the premium is eroding, then teaching ten million people to use AI is teaching them a hygiene skill, useful and worth having, but not a ladder out of anything. If instead the median is falling because AI has spread into ordinary jobs, that is the same conclusion arriving by a gentler route: the skill is becoming a baseline expectation rather than a differentiator.

Either way, the question a government ought to be asking is what people are supposed to be paid more for once everybody has the badge. That question needed the body that was set up to answer it, and it is currently between departments.