Mohamed Khande, global chairman of PwC, is optimistic about what AI will mean for work.
In an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box at the VivaTech conference in Paris on Thursday, he summarized three ways he believes AI is reshaping the labor market.
Companies that are implementing AI “at scale” are increasing their workforce, not cutting it, he said. “They’re deploying AI, which increases the number of workers they need.”
Khande then said that the more AI is used, the more valuable employees become, adding that technology gives employees “superpowers.” In the age of AI, workers should focus on developing soft skills such as emotional intelligence, judgment and collaboration, he said.
Third, the PwC chief said that while AI will not necessarily replace jobs, it will change the face of many roles in the future.
You’ve probably heard similar points from CEOs and AI leaders before. Some of them initially predicted that white-collar jobs would disappear, but many have since changed their language about replacement, emphasizing reinforcement rather than replacement.
Mr. Kande’s opinion carries weight. Because he sits on the executive board of a 370,000-employee company that is at the forefront of how AI will change work. PwC and its Big Four rivals are helping their Fortune 500 clients adapt to the AI era and rethinking their businesses, from the skills they value to the way they charge for their work.
The professional services industry is particularly exposed to AI disruption because much of its work involves analysis, research, coding, compliance, and other knowledge-based tasks.
PwC has 370,000 employees worldwide. Jack Taylor/Getty Images
Khande’s comments echoed some of the findings published this week in PwC’s 2026 Global Employment Barometer, which analyzed more than 1 billion job advertisements around the world.
The report found that companies with higher exposure to AI saw both employee numbers and wages grow faster than those with less exposure to the technology.
Since 2018, the number of employees at companies with the most exposure to AI has increased by 52%, compared with a 36% increase in companies with the least exposure, and wages have increased by 24% versus 17%, according to the report.
PwC said in its report that this disconnect is creating a two-tier workforce structure between companies that are leveraging AI to augment their workforces and those that have not yet adopted AI.
Entry level recruitment
Concerns about AI-induced job displacement tend to focus on young white-collar workers. That’s because they typically do the kinds of jobs that are now being taken over by AI: repetitive, data-intensive, and research-heavy jobs.
PwC’s AI Employment Barometer finds that entry-level jobs with exposure to AI are flattening globally.
PwC itself is planning Hiring fewer entry-level employees In the U.S., it will increase by a third over the next three years, Business Insider exclusively reported in August.
The slowdown in junior hiring is raising questions about how professional services firms will develop the next generation of talent in an industry that has traditionally relied on a steady pipeline of entry-level talent.
In the U.S. job market, PwC’s Employment Barometer found that not all young talent exposed to AI is shrinking. Those who can be expected to have higher skills are successful.
Entry-level jobs that were “upgraded” by exposure to AI, meaning they added 10 or more traditional advanced skills, increased by 35% between 2019 and 2025. Entry-level jobs exposed to non-advanced AI peers decreased by 10%.
The consequences are more complex than the simple story of unemployment. While AI may be reducing demand for some of the repetitive jobs that have long defined junior roles, it is also raising expectations about what entry-level employees need to bring from day one.
In some cases, the types of workers that companies employ are also changing. In February, PwC’s US division introduced a new career path for engineers. This is the first dedicated career path created beyond the traditional accounting and consulting roles long associated with the firm.
In November, Khande told the BBC that PwC’s global network was looking for “hundreds of engineers, but we just can’t find them”.