Half of London firms report skills gap amid AI boom

That's either the pace of AI adoption accelerating beyond reason, or companies finally dropping the pretence that a single lunchtime webinar would suffice. Either way, it's a beautiful illustration of the gap between corporate ambition and actual investment: they want the productivity gains without paying for the training.

The report calls for 'targeted investment in skills', which is management-speak for 'we should have done this three years ago when the gap was only 37%'. But let's be honest: most of these firms will respond by hiring a few data scientists on inflated salaries, then wonder why the rest of the team can't interpret their outputs. Meanwhile, the employees who weren't deemed 'AI-ready' will be quietly managed out, replaced by cheaper gig workers who already know how to prompt.

The real kicker? London's AI boom is being sold as a jobs bonanza, but it's a bonanza for the already-skilled. For the other half — the receptionists, the junior analysts, the middle managers — the message is clear: retrain at your own expense, or become a statistic. The skills gap isn't a problem to solve; it's a feature of an economy that treats workers as disposable components. Cheers, London.