Job postings that ask for AI skills have more than doubled in a year, and the offices doing the asking aren’t the ones you’d guess. The Bipartisan Policy Center’s September read of Lightcast data, published September 8, puts the increase at 165 percent, and says the growth isn’t leveling off: up 47.5 percent from January to April, then another 27 percent by August.
Look at who’s posting. Employment placement and temporary-help agencies lead the list. In the catch-all professional-services category, prompt engineering is one of the most-requested skills.
Put those together and the pattern is ordinary businesses asking for people who already know the work and can now do it with AI, not technology companies hiring technologists. One caution we’d keep in view: Lightcast counts postings, and a posting isn’t a hire.