Se exigen expertos, pero escasean los puestos para principiantes

The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence is concentrating job offers for senior profiles, while the automation of initial tasks makes it difficult for young people to access the current professional market. Employers are no longer only rewarding technological expertise, but also strategic judgment, a requirement that marginalizes beginners while companies demand only highly consolidated senior profiles.

A job posting by Novartis in Barcelona on October 2nd helps illustrate the changes in the labor market. The pharmaceutical company is looking for a process improvement manager capable of reviewing how drugs are developed, questioning established procedures, and achieving measurable gains in productivity, quality, and regulatory compliance.

AI appears among the tools the manager must handle, alongside data analysis and work organization methods. However, the real requirement is much more demanding: knowing what to change, how to do it, and who should be accountable for the results. The company also published on October 12th a search to lead the transformation of corporate training.

In this case, it needs a professional who will help employees learn new skills and adopt different ways of working. These two positions are very different, but share a common element: technology matters as much as the ability to integrate it into an organization's functioning. This combination of technological knowledge and management capabilities appears in all 20 skills of this week's E&E Barometer.

The first positions remain occupied by analytical thinking, AI literacy, communication, adaptability, cybersecurity, and leadership. More significant new additions appear a bit lower: AI governance and managing organizational change. The ranking points to a conclusion: companies no longer need only employees capable of using new tools.

They seek professionals who can make decisions with them, implement them without causing problems, and demonstrate that they add value. All of this happens in a labor market that offers contradictory signals. According to Eurostat, unemployment in the eurozone was 6.4% in August and 6.1% in the European Union. In Spain, the Ministry of Labor registered 2,379,505 unemployed people in September, the best figure for that month since 2007.

However, youth unemployment rose by 21,411 people compared to August, reaching 189,141. This movement does not demonstrate a structural deterioration in access to the first job: September had a strong seasonal component. But it obliges to pay attention to an issue that is beginning to appear in several international investigations.

Analytical thinking retains the first place on the barometer, and AI literacy, the second. The order makes sense. Using a tool is relatively easy; knowing when to trust it, detecting an error, and making a prudent decision requires knowledge and experience. The World Economic Forum already pointed out in its Future of Jobs Report 2025 that seven out of ten companies considered analytical thinking essential.

It also placed AI, data, and cybersecurity among the capabilities whose value would grow the fastest up to 2030. These are predictions based on business expectations, not on contracts that have already been made. Job advertisements allow observing a more recent change. In its global report published on October 5th, Workday detects that mentions of basic AI skills, such as writing simple instructions, decreased by 25% after reaching their peak in January.

By contrast, references to advanced skills (developing systems, automating processes, or working in AI engineering) increased by 51% between September 2025 and July 2026. The research is based on advertisements from around 550 companies using Workday Recruiting. It does not represent the entire labor market and does not mean that learning to use AI has lost importance.

It shows that, among that group of companies, interest is shifting towards those who know how to build solutions with the technology. This evolution helps explain the seventh place in software development and AI agents, as well as the fifth in cybersecurity. The demand for technical specialists does not disappear because tools can write code.

In certain functions, what changes is the work of the programmer: less time spent producing instructions and more responsibility over system design, integration, security, and reliability. The problem arises when observing which people companies seek to perform those functions. An analysis by Indeed Hiring Lab shows that U.S. software development job postings grew nearly 15% since February 2025.

However, they were still 27.5% below their pre-pandemic level. And 71% of the increase between May 2025 and May 2026 corresponded to senior positions. That is, the recovery exists, but it benefits especially those who already have experience. PwC detects a complementary signal in its Global AI in Employment Barometer 2026: in the United States, entry-level positions most exposed to AI have a seven times higher probability of requiring traditional skills typically associated with senior professionals, such as judgment and leadership.

Here lies one of the most important questions for the future of employment: if companies automate simple tasks with which young people learned their profession, how will they manage to train the experts they will need in five or ten years?