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During the 2010s, coding took the spotlight as one of the most desired skills in the job market. The coding craze spread quickly, with parents badgering their kids to drop the English major and opt for a STEM degree. Even former President Barack Obama urged people to learn to code; Obama also became the first president to write a line of code as part of the \u201cHour of Code\u201d\u2014an online event to promote Computer Science Education Week.<\/p>\n
On the flip side of this phenomenon, English and liberal arts majors became subjects of scrutiny, some dubbing them \u201cbarista\u201d degrees in the belief that pursuing those majors would inevitably confine one to a job at a coffee shop, assuming such degrees have limited career prospects.<\/p>\n
But the insurgence of AI is actually upending those assumptions. That\u2019s at least what Palantir cofounder and billionaire Peter Thiel thinks. In a resurfaced clip from a 2024 interview with economist Tyler Cowen, Thiel said the odds are falling out of favor for STEM folks.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems much worse for the math people than the word people,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Storytellers are hot on the job market<\/p>\n
The billionaire\u2019s comments reflect an emerging trend in today\u2019s labor market. LinkedIn released a skills study earlier this year titled \u201cLinkedIn Skills on the Rise 2026: The Fastest-Growing Skills in the U.S.\u201d that shows rising demand for communications and creative thinking skills. Communication, along with leadership and people management, are some of the most sought-after skills in today\u2019s labor market, according to the report.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cCompanies are increasingly looking for great communicators, because strong writing, clarity, and judgment still matter,\u201d a LinkedIn spokesperson told Fortune. They noted \u201cstorytelling\u201d has become an especially desirable skill today. \u201cOn LinkedIn, we\u2019ve seen job postings mentioning \u2018storytellers\u2019 double over the last year.\u201d In fact, some companies are shelling out more than $1 million for storytellers and high-level communications professionals. Anthropic, for example, was hiring for a head of communications with a $400,000 starting salary, and Netflix was offering between $656,000 and $1.2 million for a senior director of communications.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
To be sure, the report doesn\u2019t serve as a go-ahead to shred your STEM diploma. LinkedIn also found several technical skills are hot on the market, including AI prompt engineering and data annotation. These skills, though, diverge from the bread and butter of STEM degrees as they\u2019re oriented around training AI rather than building it. While some AI prompt engineer job openings call for knowledge of programming languages\u2014including Python and JavaScript, as well as a background in large language models\u2014the postings also emphasize strong linguistic and creative skills to optimize AI outputs, and pay an average salary of $128,000, according to job platform Glassdoor.<\/p>\n
As AI development advances, many leaders and AI experts predict the tech will dramatically reshape the job market, and with it, the most-valued skills. With that development, some math and other STEM skills risk becoming obsolete.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Boris Cherny, creator of Anthropic\u2019s Claude Code, admitted he hasn\u2019t written a single line of code since November (although he still checks the code he has AI write). Meanwhile, AI is increasingly expanding into fields occupied by STEM experts, including basic programming and data analysis.<\/p>\n
How the labor market is shaping up in the AI era<\/p>\n
While the labor market has proved particularly dire for all recent college graduates\u2014surpassing the unemployment rate for all workers in 2022 and hitting 5.6% in 2025\u2014some STEM-oriented careers have an especially high unemployment rate, according to recently published data from the New York Federal Reserve. Computer engineering ranks as the major with the second-highest unemployment rate, at 7.8%, after anthropology.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But some STEM graduate unemployment rates hover below the average for all college graduates of 3.1%, including for aerospace engineering and engineering technologies majors, at 2.2% and 1.7%, respectively.<\/p>\n
Still, during the 2024 interview, Thiel argued that even in STEM fields currently untouched by AI automation, using math skills as a bar to entry will fall out of fashion thanks to AI.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want to go to medical school, we weed people out through physics and calculus,\u201d he said. \u201cAs a neurosurgeon, I don\u2019t really want someone operating on my brain to be doing prime number factorizations in their head while they\u2019re operating on my brain.\u201d<\/p>\n
A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on Feb. 26, 2026.<\/p>\n
More on the future of work:<\/p>\n
#Peter #Thiel #warns #bigger #threat #technical #roles #creative #thinkers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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