Cornerstone’s Skills Report Reveals the ‘Great Skills Merge’ as AI Reshapes Every Job

The walls between “technical jobs” and “people jobs” are coming down—and according to Cornerstone OnDemand’s 2026 Skills Economy Report, they’re not coming back. The company’s latest analysis of global labor demand shows that AI isn’t just changing tasks; it’s fundamentally changing what employers value, creating a new breed of hybrid roles that fuse technical literacy with high-level human skills.

Cornerstone dubs this shift the “Great Skills Merge,” and the numbers behind it make the case bluntly. Data literacy needs are exploding in roles that require human interaction—up 22% in customer-facing jobs—while emotional intelligence (yes, EI) is skyrocketing in technical fields, jumping 95% year-over-year. In other words: the data scientist now needs soft skills, and the customer success rep better be fluent in dashboards.

Based on 28 terabytes of real-time labor market intelligence spanning 200+ countries, 50,000 skills, and millions of jobs, the report paints a picture of a global labor market pivoting toward a workforce that’s half technical, half human—and increasingly hard to label.

Cornerstone’s CEO Himanshu Palsule sums it up with a warning:

“The future is not going to wait for those who fail to meet the moment and invest in their people.”

AI Overtakes Communication as the #1 Global Skill

For more than a decade, communication was the most in-demand skill across global job postings. Not anymore. AI implementation skills surged 245%, making them the number-one sought-after capability across industries.

To put that jump in context: a 245% increase year over year in skills demand is seismic—equivalent to the early years of cloud adoption spread across every business function simultaneously.

Cornerstone’s data suggests organizations want employees who can:

• Deploy AI tools

• Integrate AI into workflows

• Interpret AI outputs

• Identify risks and opportunities

• Partner with AI systems, not just use them

This aligns with a broader shift across HR tech and enterprise IT: AI fluency is no longer a specialist skill; it’s becoming a baseline.

Human Skills Are Up—But Only the Ones AI Can’t Replicate

Interestingly, the report doesn’t show a blanket decline in human skills. It shows a bifurcation. Skills rooted in predictable, repeatable tasks—customer service (-45%), admin support (-38%), traditional sales and marketing (-22%)—are dropping fast as automation takes over.

But “uniquely human” capabilities are booming:

• Emotional intelligence: +95%

• Resilience and flexibility: +42%

• Leadership & social influence: +28%

• Creative thinking: +18%

This shift reflects a pattern emerging in multiple industries: AI has automated the simple parts of jobs, leaving humans to handle the ambiguous, the relational, and the strategic.

Mohan Reddy, Chief Scientist at SkyHive Engineering (now part of Cornerstone), notes that understanding both historical and real-time workforce patterns is critical for planning amid “unprecedented transformation.”

Translation: AI is not just eliminating tasks—it’s redrawing the skill profiles of entire professions.

Green Skills Surge as Climate Investment Reaches Trillions

Beyond AI, the report highlights the rapid escalation of demand for green-focused talent. As governments and companies pour trillions into decarbonization, roles tied to sustainability and renewable energy are entering hypergrowth:

• Sustainability management: +180%

• Green tech capabilities: +156%

• Renewable energy systems: +165%

These trends align with the broader climate tech boom. Companies in energy, manufacturing, ESG reporting, and supply chain operations are scrambling to staff roles that didn’t exist five years ago.

And unlike the AI surge, which spans all industries, demand for green skills is most concentrated among heavy infrastructure sectors—utilities, transportation, logistics, and advanced manufacturing.

Healthcare Skills Spike as Global Populations Age

Cornerstone’s analysis shows a massive rise in healthcare-related skills, driven by aging populations, post-pandemic restructuring, and accelerated biotech innovation.

Top growth areas include:

• Registered nursing: +278%

• Biotechnology: +145%

• Patient care: +79%

This aligns with broader labor shortages in nursing and health services. Governments worldwide are boosting immigration pathways for healthcare professionals, while biotech investments surge, driving demand for scientific talent.

It’s a rare industry where both human-centric skills and technical expertise are rising in tandem, underscoring how healthcare remains a unique hybrid labor market.

The Great Skills Merge: What It Means for Organizations

The report points to a shift that HR leaders and CIOs can’t ignore: the era of siloed “technical vs. people” roles is over. Organizations must adapt to a 50–50 workforce where AI skills and human skills carry equal weight.

Several implications stand out:

1. Workforce planning must shift from roles to skills.

The traditional job architecture model—static titles, slow updates—won’t survive the pace of AI transformation.

2. Internal reskilling programs must double down on hybrid skill development.

This means technical training for people-centric teams and human-skills training for technical teams.

3. AI fluency is becoming table stakes across all job functions.

Employees who can’t work with AI tools will struggle to keep up.

4. Leadership development must evolve.

Leading an AI-augmented workforce requires far more resilience, creativity, and emotional intelligence than classical management styles.

5. Data-driven skills intelligence will become a competitive advantage.

Companies leveraging live labor market analytics will outpace those relying on outdated competency models.

Cornerstone’s Data Edge: 28 TB as a Strategic Moat

Cornerstone’s dataset—spanning resumes, job posts, education programs, government stats, and corporate skills taxonomies—is one of the largest live workforce intelligence repositories in the world. That scale gives the company two key advantages:

• Precision: Higher accuracy in identifying emerging skill patterns

• Coverage: Insights across sectors, regions, and experience levels

Competitors like LinkedIn, Eightfold, and Workday also maintain robust skills graphs, but Cornerstone’s blend of public labor data, proprietary corporate data, and global coverage positions it uniquely in the workforce agility market.

For buyers evaluating skills intelligence tools, this dataset is the differentiator.

The Bottom Line: AI Isn’t Just Changing Work—it’s Changing Workers

Cornerstone’s Skills Economy Report makes one point clear: the biggest shift in the labor market isn’t AI replacing jobs—it’s AI rewriting what jobs are. The emerging workforce is hybrid, blended, fluid, and deeply intertwined with technology.

Organizations that update their talent strategies will gain agility. Those that don’t will be caught flat-footed as roles evolve faster than their internal structures can handle.

Or as Palsule puts it:

“People will always be at the center of progress—but only if organizations invest in them.”

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