What AI skills will actually matter for kids by 2035?

AI + parenting/7 min read

Not coding, or at least not coding alone. The skills that will hold value by 2035 are knowing how to direct AI, and the human skills AI makes more valuable: judgement, creativity, curiosity, and resilience. The World Economic Forum expects 39 percent of core job skills to change by 2030, and PwC finds entry-level roles most exposed to AI are already seven times more likely to demand senior skills like judgement and leadership. Today's ten-year-olds will walk straight into that market.

Will coding still matter by 2035?

As a literacy, yes. As a career moat, no.

Coding teaches how machines think, and that understanding will stay useful the way numeracy stays useful. But the specific act of writing code is exactly the kind of routine expertise AI absorbs first, and the market is already saying so: PwC's Jobs Barometer shows employer demand for formal degrees falling fastest in AI-exposed jobs, with the share of AI-automated roles requiring a degree dropping from 53 to 44 percent in five years. What employers pay for is shifting from producing the work to directing and judging it.

So the honest advice for a parent is not "coding class or nothing." It is: let coding be one literacy among several, and put the real practice time into the skills that sit above the code.

What kind of job market will today's kids walk into?

Bigger than the headlines suggest, and harder at the entry point.

The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs research projects around 170 million new roles created by 2030 against 92 million displaced, a net gain of 78 million jobs. Work is not disappearing. It is being reshuffled, and 39 percent of workers' core skills are expected to change in the process.

The catch for children is where the reshuffling bites: the bottom rung. PwC's 2026 Barometer, built on over a billion job ads across 27 countries, finds that AI-exposed entry-level roles are seven times more likely than unexposed ones to require traditionally senior skills such as judgement and leadership. Those roles are growing, up 35 percent since 2019 while other entry-level roles declined, but they no longer accept "junior" as a skill level. The career ladder is compressing, and our kids will start their careers on its higher rungs or not at all.

That sounds alarming until you notice what it rewards: exactly the capabilities a child can practise for free, for years, before their first CV.

Which skills is AI making more valuable, not less?

Two clusters, and the data on both is unusually consistent.

Commanding the machine. Workers with demonstrable AI skills now earn an average wage premium of 62 percent over comparable roles without them, up from 56 percent a year earlier, and jobs requiring AI skills have grown roughly eight times faster than the overall market since 2019. This is not a programmer statistic; the premium spans marketing, finance, HR, and operations. The skill being paid for is knowing what to delegate to AI, how to brief it, and how to judge what comes back.

Staying human on purpose. PwC finds the new tasks added to AI-exposed roles are 2.5 times more likely to rely on empathy, judgement, and creativity, precisely because AI absorbed the routine around them. The WEF's employer surveys point the same way: analytical thinking is the single most-cited core skill, named essential by 70 percent of companies, with creative thinking, resilience, and curiosity and lifelong learning among the fastest-rising.

Put the two clusters together and the 2035 picture is clear. The valuable person is not the one who competes with AI at production, and not the one who avoids it, but the one who directs it and supplies the judgement it cannot.

What should a child actually practise, starting now?

Translate the employer lists into things a nine-year-old can do, and they stop being intimidating:

Asking good questions. Briefing an AI well and interrogating a teacher well are the same muscle. A child who habitually asks "how do you know?" is training the top skill on the WEF list.

Judging answers. Give a child an AI answer and ask what is wrong with it. Spotting the confident mistake is the core professional skill of the next twenty years, and kids find it delightfully subversive.

Finishing things. Resilience on the WEF list is, in child terms, completing projects after the exciting part ends. AI makes starting things nearly free; finishing remains stubbornly human.

Making something real. Creativity in the data is not art class, it is producing things that did not exist: a story, a stall, a game, a plan. AI is the cheapest creative apprentice a child has ever had.

Half of what I know about how children actually see AI comes from building a project with my own daughter. What strikes me most is what she does not ask. She has never asked whether AI will take her job. She asks why it gets things wrong, and whether she is allowed to argue with it. That instinct, treating AI as a capable thing to be questioned and directed rather than magic to be feared, is the whole skill set in embryo, and it is teachable at any kitchen table.

Where do you start as a parent?

Not with a coding bootcamp. With conversations, boundaries, and one small project a month, and none of it requires you to be technical.

The full version of this answer became a book. It takes the same WEF and PwC evidence, translates all ten employer skills into parent language, covers the jobs rising and fading, the coding question in depth, and ends with a week-by-week plan you can start on a Monday morning: Raising Kids in the Age of AI. It is free, and it was written by a parent doing this in real time, not a futurist.

FAQ

Should my child learn to code? As a literacy, yes; as a guaranteed career, no. Coding teaches how machines think, but the market premium is moving to directing and judging AI-produced work. Treat coding like numeracy: valuable foundation, not the whole plan.

What is the single most important skill for kids in the AI era? Judgement: the ability to look at an answer, machine or human, and assess whether it is right, honest, and good enough. Employers name analytical thinking as the most essential core skill, and AI-exposed entry roles increasingly demand it from day one.

Will AI take my child's future job? The evidence points to reshuffling, not disappearance: roughly 170 million roles created against 92 million displaced by 2030, a net gain of 78 million. The risk is not "no jobs." It is arriving at the entry level without the human skills those jobs now demand.

At what age should a child start using AI? Alongside a parent, as soon as they can hold a conversation about it; independently, only with boundaries agreed first. The goal at every age is the same: AI as a tool the child questions and directs, never an oracle the child obeys.

Author box

Natalya Rojkova is a finance leader who runs capital controls for multi-billion dollar data centre builds by day and builds with AI agents every evening. She writes about delegation, agents, and raising kids ready for the AI era, and co-creates the Kids in AI project with her daughter.

CTA block (AI + parenting pillar)

The full parent's plan, free. Raising Kids in the Age of AI translates the WEF and PwC evidence into a week-by-week plan for your family, written by a parent, not a futurist. [Link: /kids-book, Kit form: kids-book]

Sources referenced in text (for the page footer, optional)

World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025: 39% of core skills to change by 2030; ~170M roles created vs 92M displaced, net +78M; analytical thinking essential for 70% of companies; creative thinking, resilience, curiosity among fastest-rising skills.
PwC Global AI Jobs Barometer 2026 (1B+ job ads, 27 countries): 62% average wage premium for AI skills, up from 56%; AI-skill jobs growing 69% since 2019 vs 9% overall; AI-exposed entry-level roles 7x more likely to require senior skills, up 35% since 2019; new tasks in AI-exposed roles 2.5x more likely to rely on empathy, judgement, creativity.
PwC Global AI Jobs Barometer 2025: degree requirements for AI-automated roles down from 53% to 44% (2019-2024).