Workers are racing to master AI, but employers are much more focused on communication, leadership and other foundational capabilities, according to a new joint report from learning platform Udemy and jobs site Indeed released on Thursday. The data shows a striking divide: AI only appears in 3.8% of Indeed job listings, but the skill is driving 67.5% of employee learning activity on Udemy. 

The joint report combined internal data from both Udemy and Indeed and compared two time points, September 2023 and September 2025, to identify the fastest-growing skills in hiring and learning. 

On the surface, upskilling with AI makes sense — employees are seeing statistics all around about AI’s potential to disrupt their livelihoods. One such example is Indeed’s 2025 AI at Work Report, which found that AI will affect almost every job to some extent. The report revealed that AI will likely highly transform more than one in four jobs (26%) and moderately impact 54% of them.

“I think there are a lot of people who are learning AI skills because they hope that it’s going to set them up for that next role, give them that security,” Elizabeth Weingarten, head of behavioral science insights at Udemy, tells Entrepreneur in a new interview. 

On Udemy, this urgency shows profoundly in course enrollments. Nearly 70% of the fastest-growing course topics are AI-related. In tech specifically, a remarkable 95% of upskilling time is going into AI skills such as ChatGPT and AI agents. 

By contrast, employers are still hiring heavily for soft and business-critical skills. Communication skills appear in more than half of the high-growth skills in Indeed job postings, yet do not appear at all among Udemy’s fastest-growing learning topics. 

The joint report also highlights a perception gap inside companies. In the U.S., half of managers cite communication and critical thinking as gaps in their entry-level workforce — but just 13% to 14% of entry-level workers acknowledge these skills as deficiencies. In the UK, 51% of managers see communication deficiencies, but just 8% of employees recognize the problem, suggesting that many people may be overestimating their workplace strengths. 

“Communication is such a massive umbrella for so many human or people skills that are important,” Weingarten says. “For someone who is more entry-level, I would say a critical communication skill is being able to sometimes overcommunicate what you’re doing in your role and what the impact is.”

Weingarten points out that employees are “future-proofing” by investing in skills they cannot easily pick up on the job, such as AI certifications. Yet she warns that ignoring soft skills is risky. 

“I think the big risk is that if you don’t take soft skills seriously, you may be only getting halfway there,” she says.  

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