AI-driven job changes risk widening STEM skills gaps, survey claims - Laboratory News

The nice people at SThree, a workforce consultancy, commissioned YouGov to ask 885 UK STEM employees how things are going, and the answer — collected diligently between 10 July and 1 September 2026 — is: worse than the org chart suggests. Fifteen per cent said colleagues had left in the past year because AI had changed their work "beyond recognition." Beyond recognition is doing magnificent work there: it means the job still exists on paper, the headcount is still in the system, and the tasks that used to fill the day have quietly evaporated like a puddle in August.

Then there is the 37% — more than a third — who say their organisation is adopting technologies such as AI too quickly to consider fully how people's roles will be affected. In Britain, getting more than a third of any group to agree on anything is a historic achievement; here they have managed it on the subject of their own employers moving too fast. The considered response to "we are moving too quickly to consider this" will, one assumes, be a webinar, then a pulse survey, then a restructure announced on a Friday.

And do note who commissioned the research: a workforce consultancy, whose findings conveniently establish that what's required is expert help with workforce transition. The article calls it a widening skills gap, which is one phrase for a vanishing job title and a person expected to learn the replacement on their own time. Meanwhile the adverts ask for AI fluency, the training budget remains the size of a sandwich, and everyone agrees something ought to be done about it by somebody.