Workers in Asia-Pacific who have advanced digital skills potentially earn up to 65% more than those who do not use digital skills at work, according to a new report by workplace consultancy Gallup and Amazon Web Services.
That’s comparing workers with the same educational background and years of working experience.
Advanced digital skills refer to skills in complex areas such as software or application development, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Cloud architects and software developers are considered advanced digital workers.
Digitally skilled workers — those with advanced skills as well as those with basic or intermediate skills like email and word processing — add approximately $4.7 trillion to the region’s annual gross domestic product, according to the Asia Pacific 2023 Digital Skills report.
“Organizations in the APAC region that employ advanced digital workers — such as software developers or cloud architects — report 2021 annual revenues 150% higher than organizations that employ only basic digital workers, and 286% higher than those that employ intermediate digital workers,” the report said.
More than 30,000 employees and 9,000 employers across 19 countries participated in the survey. Respondents were from countries including Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, and Thailand.
Higher salaries
The findings revealed the more highly skilled digital workers are, on average, drawing 58% higher wages than their peers who do not use digital skills at all.
Even workers who use basic digital skills such as emailing or word processing earn 39% more than those who do not use any digital skill at work.
This is more pronounced in Singapore and Indonesia, where employees who use any level of digital skills are earning 97% and 93% higher wages respectively, compared to their non-digital peers, according to the report.