Pay boosts for IT skills have been in decline for three years—but AI certifications are contradicting the trend, according to new data from Foote Partners.
Both IT certifications and non-certified skills experienced a 0.7% dip in pay premiums during the third quarter of 2025. Yet AI-related certifications climbed nearly 12% over the past year, marking a significant difference from the bigger trend. Foote Partners found that during the same time period, pay for non-certified AI skills decreased 1%. Organizations such as CompTIA and vendors like Cisco have launched AI-related certifications.
“We are continually asked about how AI and other fast-paced emerging technologies are impacting jobs and pay for tech professionals. To answer this question, we have decades of data from our ITSCPI [IT Skills and Certifications Pay Index] research to show the popularity of incorporating agility tools like skill pay premiums into pay practices,” said David Foote, chief analyst and research officer at Foote Partners, in a statement. “Right now, there are 124 AI-related skills and certifications with average pay premiums ranging from an equivalent of 7% to 23% of base salary. Technology development and adoption rates are uncertain, influencing pay volatility, which has become more extreme in recent years.”
Foote Partners found that despite the growth in AI certification pay, non-certified AI skills still command significantly higher bonuses than AI certifications—averaging the equivalent of 14.5% of base salary compared to 8.3% for certifications, according to Foote Partners’ IT Skills and Certifications Pay Index, which tracks compensation data from 4,865 U.S. and Canadian employers covering 476,748 tech professionals.
“Employers are thinking about jobs more as tasks, not titles: tasks that can be done entirely by an AI agent/robot, tasks that will be done with a human working with an AI agent/robot, and finally, tasks that are uniquely human,” Foote said in the report. “Skills are mapped directly onto each of these three task categories, with new skills and skills combinations required by each task that will always be changing.”
The research shows 404 of 1,371 skills and certifications (30%) changed market value in Q3 2025, up from 280 (21%) one year ago. In Q3 2025, 161 IT skills and certifications gained market value while 243 declined—a dramatic shift from the prior quarter when gains and declines were nearly balanced.
A key finding is that non-certified IT skills show significantly more volatility than certifications. Over the past year, an average of 35% of non-certified IT skills changed in market value every 90 days, compared to 19% for IT certifications. Foote Partners explained how each type of skill is valued: non-certified skills are market-driven by employers, while certifications are heavily influenced by vendor-driven promotional marketing.
Beyond AI, the highest-paying non-certified IT skills—earning between 20% and 23% of base salary—include DevSecOps, Site Reliability Engineering, DataOps, blockchain technologies, Event-Driven Architecture, security architecture, and risk analytics.
On the certification side, skills earning 10% to 13% of base salary include offensive security certifications (such as OSEE, OSEP, and OSWE), GIAC security credentials, and project management certifications like PMI-PMP. Certifications in database/data management, networking and communications, and applications development experienced the steepest pay declines. The average cash pay premium for 648 IT certifications decreased to 6.4% of base salary, while 734 non-certified IT skills decreased to 9.5% of base salary.
According to Foote Partners, certifications decline in value for multiple reasons, such as they expire or they are retired. The research firm explains that as more professionals attain a certification, supply catches up with demand, which drives down market value.
“But just as often it is their popularity that drives down pay premiums for a certification: as interest in a certification escalates and more people attain the certification, the gap between supply and demand for the certification narrows, driving down its market value as the laws of scarcity would dictate,” the report stated.
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