The artificial intelligence jobs boom is exacerbating the gender gap women already face in the technology industry, according to new research from the jobs and networking site LinkedIn, which shows that women are underrepresented among new hires for AI jobs. 

In the U.S., women candidates accounted for just 26% of hires into jobs that require AI skills, which offer more lucrative salaries than non-AI roles, LinkedIn researchers found. That’s compared to 50% of women who were hired into non-AI positions. 

Such jobs command a pay premium as corporations invest billions in the new tech, leading to a doubling in AI job postings on the site since 2023. The typical listing advertises a salary of about $177,000, compared to roughly $80,000 for a non-AI role, according to LinkedIn. 

“AI is creating some of the fastest-growing, highest-paying, most consequential jobs in the global economy, but women are strikingly underrepresented in terms of who is getting hired, who benefits from the pay premium, and who is leading the development and deployment of this tech,” LinkedIn spokeswoman Sarah Steinberg told CBS News. 

She said the tech industry’s gender gap is more pronounced in AI, with the field’s jobs boom “compounding barriers that women face.”

Broken ladder for women

The share of women in AI roles globally narrows as they move up the corporate ladder.

Across 27 countries, women hold just 13% of leadership roles at AI firms, whereas they account for 20% of job holders in the same roles in the broader tech industry. “It’s not great representation overall, but it’s worse when you look at AI specifically,” Steinberg added. 

The trend is concerning for several reasons. First, research already shows that women are more likely to hold jobs that will be disrupted by AI, such as in customer service or administrative roles. For example, 86% of the 6.1 million workers, mostly in clerical and administrative roles that are vulnerable to AI takeover and have limited ability to adapt their skills, are women, according to The Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization. 

“We have a world in which women are more likely to have their jobs changed or disrupted by AI, and they are also not benefiting from AI pay premiums, or moving into jobs that are created by AI,” Steinberg said. “That’s what keeps me up at night when it comes to women’s place in the economy.” 

Skills-based hiring could help

A shift toward skills-based rather than credential-based hiring could help funnel more women into the AI job pipeline, according to Steinberg. If employers recruit candidates not based on the degrees they’ve earned or previous jobs they’ve held, but instead focus on the applicable skills they possess, more women could be brought into the fold, she said. 

That’s in part because it’s relatively easy for workers interested in acquiring AI skills to take online courses or training, or to gain experience by using publicly available AI tools. 

“Someone can have AI skills without having a related diploma or having held a previous job in AI,” she said.