The Bipartisan Policy Center’s September analysis of Lightcast job-posting data, published September 8, says the number of postings that include AI skills “has more than doubled relative to one year ago, increasing by 165%.” The growth is not leveling off: up 47.5 percent from January to April, and “another 27%” by August.
The industries at the top are not the ones a headline would guess. Employment placement and temporary-help agencies lead. Offices of certified public accountants are in the top ten. In the catch-all professional-services category, prompt engineering is among the most-requested skills.
Read those together and the pattern is ordinary businesses asking for people who already know the work and can now do it with AI, rather than technology companies hiring technologists.
For the valley: the region’s employers are hospitality, healthcare, real estate, agriculture and the small professional offices that serve them. If accountants’ offices nationally are already posting for AI skills, the CPA in Palm Desert and the property manager in La Quinta are the next places that demand shows up here.