LinkedIn has published its annual “Jobs on the Rise” report, which looks at which jobs are generating more interest, based on related activity on LinkedIn.
The data is based on job role changes as listed on LinkedIn user profiles, with trend notes reflective of relative changes in cumulative roles between 2023 and 2025. This includes new appointments, updated info, new roles commenced, etc.
LinkedIn also incorporates related skills for each role, also based on LinkedIn profile changes, as well as location breakdowns, gender split, and more.
So what are the big jobs on the rise in 2026?
If you guessed AI-related roles, you’d be right.
As per LinkedIn:
“This year’s list points to continued momentum in both technical and strategic AI roles, including AI engineers, AI consultants and data annotators. The rise in founders and independent consultants also points to a shift toward self-employment and gig work as professionals adapt to uncertainty.”
The actual top 10 roles that have seen the biggest rise in listings (in the U.S.) are:
- AI engineers – Engineers developing and implementing AI models that perform complex tasks
- AI consultants and strategists - Helping organizations plan and implement AI technologies to improve operations
- New home sales specialists – Which sounds like a rebranding or “real estate agent”
- Data annotators – Labeling and reviewing data for AI projects
- AI/ML researchers – Designing new AI models and systems
- Healthcare reimbursement specialists – Ensuring healthcare providers are getting correct and timely payments
- Strategic advisors and independent consultants – Which seems like a pretty broad-ranging segment
- Advertising sales specialists – You’re reading a marketing blog, I assume you know this one
- Founders – Not sure this can be listed as a job title in itself, but LinkedIn’s keen to highlight how people are shifting to their own businesses
- Sales executives – See 8
So, yeah, AI roles are seeing a big rise in LinkedIn listings, which makes perfect sense, considering that the latest wave of AI tools didn’t exist three years ago.
Does that mean that you should be going all-in on learning how AI systems work if you want to maximize your employment potential?
Well, it depends. The primary value of the latest AI tools is that they can give you alternate angles and ideas based on conversational queries, which can expand your capacity to cover more angles with your work, and potentially drive better results.
But you also need to know what you’re looking at. One of the big misnomers of AI is that it will eventually replace most humans in many roles, because AI systems can essentially do all the same things as human employees. But that’s not really what these systems are designed to do. ChatGPT, for example, will only be able to help someone who isn’t a lawyer represent themselves in court up to a certain point.
Sure, you could just not use a graphic designer, and go with AI outputs instead. But without an understanding of the nuances of image composition, you’re likely to miss out on key details, which could lead to sub-par results.
That’s the same in all applications, you might get by letting AI tools do a heap of the work for you, but these systems are not thinking, they don’t have any understanding of the outputs they provide.
So while it might look right, and it might seem like AI tools can replicate actual professionals, the devil is in the detail. And the collective knowledge of the web can often get confused about the exact correct information for any given query.
Essentially, if you understand what the output should be, then AI tools can provide additional benefit in guiding you towards the best result, by helping to dig into relevant elements. But if you don’t have that knowledge in the first place, relying on AI outputs is risky, and could get you in trouble.
As such, learning about AI tools in isolation might not be the best play, but learning about them and how they can assist in your process is definitely worth the effort.
What’s more, you can undertake LinkedIn Learning courses on AI, or any other skills listed in its “Jobs on the Rise” report for free till February 6th.
It could be worth checking out the full list, and learning about what’s most relevant for your sector.
