Workday report shows changing AI skills in job postings

Its employer data shows rising mentions of applied AI skills and a decline in foundational skills from their peak.

Maya Chen
October 5, 2026
Research, Industry
1 min

Two adults work at adjacent computers in an office with blue walls and desk partitions — Archival office photograph by phyo min. The people shown are unrelated to this research.

Listen to this article

Workday’s October 5 report describes changing AI skills requirements in job postings across 554 enterprise employers using its recruiting software.

From September 2025 through July 2026, mentions of applied AI skills rose 51 percent. That category includes building tools and automating workflows. Mentions of foundational skills, such as prompting and using copilots, fell 25 percent from their January 2026 peak through July. Technology employers were an exception, with mentions rising in both categories.

What the data can show

The report’s methodology describes separate panels for workforce metrics and employee surveys. Some measures are provisional. This is descriptive vendor research. Skill mentions do not establish actual hiring outcomes or prove that AI caused employment changes.

Related coverage examines a Templafy survey of AI document review workloads.

Archival office photograph by phyo min on Unsplash, published May 11, 2023, under the Unsplash License. The people shown are unrelated to this research. Converted to WebP for delivery. Display crops vary by layout.

Maya Chen

Maya Chen is focused on covering AI models, research, and the evidence behind new capabilities. Maya follows model launches, benchmarks, open weights, and scientific uses of AI with one question in mind. What changed, and how would we know? The voice is curious and exacting, with a soft spot for elegant technical ideas and little patience for a leaderboard without context.