UAE employees equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) skills are commanding significantly higher salaries than their peers, with workers in the financial services sector earning a 92 per cent wage premium, according to PwC’s newly released 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer.

The report also found that professionals in the technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) sector are securing a 50 per cent premium for AI-related skills, followed by manufacturing (47 per cent), professional services (21 per cent), energy, utilities and resources (18 per cent), and consumer markets (8 per cent).

Stay up to date with the latest news. Follow KT on WhatsApp Channels.

In the finance sectors, the average salaries of a financial analyst, CEO, data analyst and senior accountant are Dh150,000, Dh982,000, Dh144,000 and Dh78,000, respectively, according to Payscale.com. But finance professionals who are equipped with AI skills command almost double that of their peers.

PwC’s 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer showed that the UAE’s share of jobs requiring AI skills has nearly tripled over the past four years, rising from just 4,600, or 1.0 per cent, in 2021 to 12,200, or 3.2 per cent, in 2025. The growth places the country among the fastest-scaling AI talent markets in the world, reflecting the pace at which businesses are embedding AI-related requirements into their hiring criteria.

Applying AI rather than building it

The report highlighted a clear pattern in how AI-related roles are evolving in the UAE, with demand overwhelmingly skewed towards “AI User” positions rather than “AI Developer” roles.

Jobs in the AI User category grew by 28 per cent over the past year alone, suggesting that companies in the UAE are prioritising the integration of AI tools into day-to-day business operations over investment in backend AI development capabilities.

The UAE’s most AI-exposed occupations are undergoing a considerably faster pace of skills transformation compared with the rest of the world.

According to the report, these roles recorded an average transformation score of 7.22, well above the global average of 4.47, indicating that job functions in the UAE are being reshaped more rapidly by AI adoption than in most other markets.