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Robert Half counts 72% of managers planning to pay AI-skilled recruits more in 2027
Robert Half says 72% of managers plan to pay more for recruits with AI skills in 2027. Its raise table and LinkedIn's posting data put that premium anywhere from about two points of salary to $97,000 a year, so whichever source a budget uses sets the line item.
The Investor · Invest desk
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What happened
- In the same survey, 42% of managers said AI knowledge commands a bigger pay surcharge than other technical skills.
- About 57% of US managers say they already offer new hires higher salaries than they had planned.
- Around 64% of managers say job offers have become more competitive than they were three years ago.
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Why it matters
- cost A hiring plan pegged to the 1.7% average raise comes up short on every AI-skilled recruit, and the team that planned to the average covers the shortfall.
- constraint If roughly 30 points of managers price AI skills like any other technical skill, a separate AI pay band is hard to justify for most roles.
- decision The survey prices hires and does not count them, so finance teams have to set pay rates and hiring numbers together to learn whether AI lowers the wage bill.
- exposure Employers offering the premium are competing for the roughly 5% of US workers rated AI fluent, so those recruits hold the pricing power in offer negotiations.
Robert Half's 72% is a count of managers who intend to pay an AI premium [1], and Fortune's account of the survey does not give a size for it. The two dollar figures nearby come from a LinkedIn study and from Robert Half's own raise table [6][4].
LinkedIn's is the larger. The average US AI job posting offers about $177,000 a year against roughly $80,000 for non-AI roles [6]. That is a gap of $97,000, or 2.2 times the pay [13][14]. The comparison sets the average AI posting against the average of every other posting, so it measures what AI jobs pay. Adding an AI skill to an existing job title is a different purchase. Fortune rounds the gap to a $100,000 premium [7].
Robert Half's raise table is the smaller one. Fortune describes the specialist raises as more than double the 1.7% projected across all specialties [18]. For newly hired data scientists, the technology role the coverage leads with, the ratio is 1.94 [19]. Theirs is the smallest of the five raises listed, and financial analysts get 3.8% [4].
Dawn Fay, operational president at Robert Half, described who employers are paying for. "Employers are willing to offer higher pay for professionals who understand where AI can add value, can integrate it into day-to-day processes, and can apply it responsibly to solve real business challenges," she told Fortune [9]. She is describing an analyst or an assistant who uses AI well. The survey's split points the same way. If the 42% who rank AI above other technical skills [2] sit inside the 72%, about 30 points of managers plan to pay for AI skills at no more than they already pay for other technical ones [15].
The premium could settle into the raise table at 1.6 to 2.2 points above the average [16], or up to about $1,760 a year on an $80,000 salary [17]. It could widen toward the posting gap: AI postings have doubled since 2023 [8], and only about 5% of US workers count as AI fluent, according to Ipsos and Google [10]. Or the price per AI-skilled hire could rise while the number of hires falls. Fortune reports that AI has already been responsible for tens of thousands of US job cuts [11]. McKinsey Global Institute expects AI and automation to cut demand for about 36 million US jobs by 2035, while growth creates the need for 41 million other roles [12].
I think the first path is the one to plan on. Price AI-skilled recruits a couple of points above the 1.7% line [4], and treat the LinkedIn gap as the pay for a different job. Whether AI then lowers a team's total wage bill depends on headcount, and headcount is a separate decision from the price per hire. This view is wrong if 2027 offers for the same title with AI skills attached run well above 3.9%, the top of Robert Half's table [4].
What to watch
- Robert Half's next salary guide: whether the 42% who rank AI above other technical skills moves toward the 72% who plan some premium.
- The share of US workers rated AI fluent, now about 5%: a larger pool would cap the premium employers have to pay.
- Employer headcount plans for 2027: fewer hires at a higher price per head could still shrink the total wage bill.