Skills Inflation Tracker: Are Employers Asking for More Than They Used To?

Every year brings a new round of commentary about rising skill requirements. More tools, more frameworks, more AI literacy. The assumption is that employers keep piling on demands, and candidates need to run faster just to keep up.

We tested that assumption against three months of job posting data, tracking how skill counts, AI penetration, and seniority distributions are actually changing. The short answer: the inflation narrative is overstated. The market has settled into a consistent pattern, and it isn't accelerating.

The skill count plateau

Between December 2025 and February 2026, the average number of skills per posting held steady at 9.4 to 9.6 across all roles. There was no upward drift, no month-over-month escalation, no sign that employers are progressively expanding their wish lists.

Breaking it down by role type, the pattern holds everywhere. Data engineers sit at 11.8 to 12.1 skills per posting across the three months. ML engineers at 11.3 to 11.8. Data scientists at 9.2 to 9.6. Analytics engineers at 9.3 to 9.8. Project managers at 7.8 to 8.0. Programme managers at 7.8 to 8.1. Every role stayed within a one-point band.

The takeaway for hiring managers: if your posting lists 9 to 10 technical skills, you're at market pace. If it lists 15 or more, the issue is likely scope creep in the spec, not an industry-wide inflation trend.

AI skills: mainstream but not universal

One area where you might expect inflation is AI. Every conference, every newsletter, every investor deck says AI is transforming every role. So how fast is AI actually penetrating job requirements?

About one in three postings now mentions at least one AI-related skill. That includes terms like LLMs, generative AI, machine learning, RAG, prompt engineering, transformers, deep learning, and NLP. In December, the penetration rate was 32.5%. In January, 32.8%. In February, 31.2%.

The plateau is the finding. After whatever initial surge happened earlier in 2025, AI skill demands have stabilised at roughly a third of all postings. That's significant. It means two thirds of roles in data, product, and delivery aren't asking for explicit AI competency.

The penetration varies sharply by role type. ML engineers and data scientists drive most of the AI skill mentions. For project managers and programme managers, AI appears in 6 to 11% of postings. If you're in a delivery role, AI literacy is a differentiator. It hasn't become a baseline requirement.

The seniority rebalance

If there's one area where the market is shifting, it's in seniority distribution. December's data showed 48.7% of postings targeting senior-level candidates. By February, that had dropped to 35.1%. Mid-level hiring, meanwhile, climbed from 11.8% to 18.0% over the same period.

Junior roles stayed flat at 3 to 6% of postings across all months. Staff and director-level positions held steady at 8 to 11% each.

The practical reading: the market is opening up slightly for mid-career candidates. The December skew toward senior hiring appears to have been either seasonal or an artifact of early data source composition. The February distribution, with about a third senior and a fifth mid-level, is likely closer to the steady state.

The skills inflation narrative makes for good commentary. It just doesn't match what the data shows. The market has settled into a rhythm: 9 to 10 skills per posting, AI in a third of roles, and a seniority mix that's actually loosening after a senior-heavy December. If anything, the trend line is toward accessibility, with more mid-career openings in February than the market has offered in months.

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Based on 5,137 job postings from company career pages, tracking data, product, and delivery roles across London, New York, Denver, San Francisco, and Singapore. Data covers December 2025 through February 2026 (November excluded due to limited source coverage). Full interactive dashboard at richjacobs.me/projects/hiring-market.