Digital skills, anyone? These 3 areas rank highest for U.S. professionals

If you were 18 years old again – and could pick any college major you wanted – which field would leave you best prepared for whatever the future decades might bring?

Take a tip from undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who enjoy more than 100 options, ranging from psychology to supply-chain management. Their fastest-growing pick, by a wide margin, is data analytics. 

That preference is echoed in the latest edition of LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence survey. Among U.S. professionals – a group spanning multiple generations – data analysis tops the list of digital skills everyone would like to gain or improve. Such expertise is emerging as a universal skill, paying off in data-hungry fields that range from marketing to accounting.

As the chart below shows, 28% of U.S. professionals regard data analytics as a digital skill they want to develop or enhance this year. That’s the highest percentage among six digital-skill options offered in a survey of 9,147 professionals. Interviews were conducted from March 11 through April 21. 

Unlike college students, who really do commit to taking courses in their declared majors, working adults who declare interest in gaining new skills may act slowly, if at all. So some percentage of this intended learning mightn’t happen.

Still, skills growth starts with a desire to learn, and when it comes to digital expertise, the spark is there for the majority of U.S professionals.

Only 40% say they aren’t interested in adding any of the six key digital skills that were mentioned in the Workforce Confidence survey, while another 8% declined to answer. Most others picked at least one digital skill that intrigued them; some picked more than one.

Interest was strong for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) skills, too, with one in four U.S. workers (25%) voicing interest in learning those skills. Meanwhile, 38% of U.S. workers agreed with the proposition that “gaining AI skills will help me progress in my career.”

To be sure, full mastery of AI skills takes a deep grounding in computer science. But universities and online learning hubs both offer gentler survey courses that cover key concepts. Such courses let non-technical learners at least be familiar with key AI principles and methods.

For many learners, even partial knowledge of AI can be surprisingly powerful. Princeton University now offers an ML course billed as “a practical introduction for humanists and social scientists.” It’s attracting interest from students who eventually want to help set U.S. tech policy. 

Cloud computing continues to attract interest, too, with 18% of professionals saying they want to add skills in this area. The field has been commercially prominent since 2006, when Amazon launched its very successful cloud business, Amazon Web Services. But as cloud usage keeps becoming more prevalent, that expands the career-related opportunities for people with appropriate skills.

Intriguingly, three types of digital skills that seemed intensely valuable a few years ago are now a lot less prominent. The much talked-about creator economy may still be thriving for some star participants, but there’s less of a sense that it’s a game-changer for everyone else. Interest in gaining creator-economy skills is at a modest 11%.

Slightly farther down is the 10% interest in blockchain and web3 skills. That fields probably has uffered from the buzz-killing nature of the past year’s scandals relating to cryptocurrency.

Interest in augmented and virtual reality skills is at just 9%, as earlier predictions of mass enthusiasm for VR now seem either unrealistic or at least premature.

Methodology

LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence Index is based on a quantitative online survey distributed to members via email every two weeks. Roughly 3,000 to 5,000 U.S.-based members respond to each wave. Members are randomly sampled and must be opted into research to participate. Students, stay-at-home partners and retirees are excluded from analysis so we can get an accurate representation of those currently active in the workforce. We analyze data in aggregate and will always respect member privacy. Data is weighted by engagement level to ensure fair representation of various activity levels on the platform. The results represent the world as seen through the lens of LinkedIn’s membership; variances between LinkedIn’s membership and the overall market population are not accounted for.

Allison Lewis and Sharon Resheff from LinkedIn Market Research contributed to this article.