Manufacturers Not Hiring for AI Skills Despite Worker Upskilling: Indeed, Udemy Research

Across the four geographies assessed in this research—the U.S., U.K., India and Australia—60% of high-growth manufacturing learning topics on Udemy from September 2023 to September 2025 were AI-related. Over the same period, none of the high-growth skills for manufacturing job postings on Indeed were tied to AI.

This gap is even more pronounced when specifically focusing on the U.S.: 8 out of the 10 high-growth learning topics for manufacturing workers on Udemy during the two-year period pertained to AI, while none of the top 10 high-growth skills listed in manufacturing job postings on Indeed involved AI.

“Rather than misguided, these workers are strategic. They’re reading the room and getting ready for the future of their industries,” the report states.

The following are the top 10 high-growth skills for U.S. manufacturing job postings on Indeed from September 2023 to September 2025:

• Communication skills
• Leadership
• Management
• Quality control
• Lean manufacturing
• Microsoft Office
• Precision measuring instruments
• Organizational skills
• Analysis skills
• GD&T

The following are the top 10 high-growth learning topics for U.S. manufacturing workers on Udemy over the same period:

• Generative AI (GenAI)
• AI Agents & Agentic AI
• Decision Making
• Microsoft Copilot
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Large Language Models (LLM)
• JIRA
• Prompt Engineering
• GitHub Copilot
• AWS Certified AI Practitioner

“Professionals are developing a remarkable instinct, accelerating their skills journeys faster than ever before to prepare for what’s ahead,” says Hugo Sarrazin, president and CEO of Udemy. “The future belongs to workers who can build AI fluency while maintaining adaptive or soft skills that help teams collaborate effectively and navigate the workforce transformation.”