Six in Ten Employers Seek AI-Skilled Workers, But Only 14 Percent Have Them

Companies around the world are scrambling to hire workers who can competently use artificial intelligence, but such candidates are simply in short supply. The latest report from Indeed shows that nearly six in ten employers are actively looking for people who use AI to perform everyday tasks, while only 14 percent of employees rate themselves as proficient users of the technology.

The data comes from the first edition of the Indeed AI at Work Tracker 2026 report, published on July 29. The company surveyed more than a thousand job seekers and 300 employers about how artificial intelligence is actually being used in companies and in the hiring market. The results reveal a clear gap between what employers expect and the real-world competence of candidates and current employees.

Scale of the mismatch

A tech company posting a job opening that requires AI proficiency today has statistically slim odds of finding a candidate who meets that bar. With nearly 60 percent of employers saying they're looking for workers who can genuinely use AI to get work done, and only 14 percent of employees rating themselves as proficient in the field, the gap between demand and supply is many times larger than typical skills shortages seen in the labor market.

Indeed calls this group of proficient users "AI natives." These are employees who don't just use tools like ChatGPT or Copilot occasionally, but weave them into their daily workflows skillfully enough to genuinely boost their productivity. The rest of the workforce moves much more cautiously in this area, often learning through trial and error without any support from their employer.

Who gets trained, who's left alone

One of the report's most telling findings is the gap in how training is perceived. Fewer than half of all employees feel they're getting the AI training they need for their job. Among "AI natives" alone, that figure tops 75 percent. In other words, those who already know how to use AI get additional support and keep advancing, while the rest of the team falls behind.

Only 32 percent of surveyed employees said they received formal training tailored specifically to the tasks they perform day to day. The rest learn AI mostly on their own, outside company structures, which the report's authors say leads to uneven skill development within organizations and makes it harder to measure the real return on investment in these tools.

A smarter move for technology leaders is to build these skills within the organization they already have, rather than treating it purely as a hiring problem - Kyle M.K., senior talent strategy adviser at Indeed

Barriers beyond skills gaps

The report also notes that the problem isn't purely a lack of training. A quarter of surveyed employees cited concerns about the accuracy of AI-generated answers, along with ethical and data privacy issues, as the main barrier keeping them from deepening their knowledge of these tools. That suggests some employees are consciously keeping their distance from AI, not just lacking opportunities to learn it.

The report's authors set this data against a broader market backdrop: global IT spending is projected to exceed $6.3 trillion in 2026, and hyperscale companies are pouring billions of dollars into AI infrastructure. Yet the scale of that investment contrasts with organizations' limited ability to actually deploy and use the technology they've bought, simply because there aren't enough people who know how to operate it effectively.

Polish context

The Indeed report's findings also made it into the Polish IT trade press, including CRN Polska, as a warning sign for the local labor market. Tech companies and IT departments in Poland have been reporting a similar problem for months: it's easier to buy a license for an AI tool than to find an employee who can use it in a way that genuinely boosts productivity, rather than just creating extra work verifying its output.

For Polish companies, that translates into a concrete takeaway from the report: instead of counting on the market to supply ready-made AI specialists, it pays more to invest in training existing teams. Given the shortage of candidates with real skills in this area, developing employees internally may prove faster and cheaper than external hiring, for which an increasing number of employers are competing at the same time.