AI jobs are paying more than double what other roles pay, and postings have roughly doubled since 2023. Women are capturing a shrinking slice of that growth.
New LinkedIn research, drawn from platform data across dozens of countries, found women accounted for just 26% of U.S. AI hires in 2025, compared with 50% of hires into non-AI roles. Across 27 countries, women hold only 13% of C-suite AI leadership positions at AI-focused companies.
The Gap Widens the Higher You Look
The underrepresentation isn't evenly spread across AI roles. Women hold just 20% of Head of AI positions, 26% of Director of AI roles, and 18% of Member of Technical Staff positions, three of the field's highest-paying titles.
LinkedIn's research breaks the pattern into three separate gaps that compound on top of each other. Women's overall share of AI roles runs about 10 percentage points below their share of non-AI roles. At companies where AI talent makes up a significant share of the workforce, women's overall representation drops another 5 points compared with similar non-AI companies. And the gender gap at the C-suite level runs roughly 15 points wider than it does below the executive tier.
Each gap on its own is notable. Stacked together, they explain why so few women end up in AI leadership specifically, even relative to how few make it into AI roles generally.
A Credential Gap Sits Alongside the Gender One
Education tells a similar story of concentration. Ninety-one percent of AI workers hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and that share climbs above 95% in the best-paid AI roles.
That's worth noting on its own. AI hiring is drawing overwhelmingly from workers who already had strong labor market access before AI created new demand, which raises the question of how much of this growth is actually expanding opportunity versus concentrating it further among people already positioned to benefit.
Put the two gaps side by side and a pattern emerges. AI isn't just a new category of jobs, it's a new category of jobs that skews toward workers who were already well positioned before AI existed, in terms of both credentials and, per LinkedIn's gender data, who gets hired and promoted once inside those companies.
The Jobs Themselves Are Shifting Fast
The roles driving this growth are changing too. AI Engineer has overtaken Machine Learning Engineer as the most common AI job title on LinkedIn. VP of AI postings are up roughly sixfold. And Forward Deployed Engineer, a role focused on helping organizations actually implement AI systems rather than build them, is now the third most common AI occupation in job postings.
It's worth noting this data comes from LinkedIn's own platform, based on how members self-report roles and skills, not an independently audited labor survey. That doesn't undercut the scale of the gap, but it's platform data describing LinkedIn's user base specifically, not the entire labor market.
What This Means for Miami
South Florida has spent the past few years building out its AI and tech talent pipeline through programs at FIU, the University of Miami, and initiatives tied to events like eMerge Americas. This data is a useful benchmark for whether that pipeline is actually diversifying who lands the highest-paying roles, or simply expanding the same pattern LinkedIn found nationally.
Miami employers hiring for AI positions have a concrete number to check their own hiring against: 26% women hired into AI roles nationally, dropping further at the leadership level. Local companies that want a different outcome than the national trend will need to look specifically at who's making it into Head of AI, Director of AI and technical staff roles, not just AI hiring overall, since that's where LinkedIn's data shows the gap is widest.
There's also a compensation angle worth watching locally. If AI roles really do pay more than double the typical non-AI role, and Miami's AI hiring mirrors the national pattern, the gap isn't just about titles and representation. It compounds directly into the region's gender pay gap as AI becomes a larger share of the local job market.