Knowledge of AI as a Future Work Skill for Career Sustainability

In response to the pervasive influence of AI across various professional domains, we investigate how the acquisition of AI knowledge as a future work skill can foster career sustainability. Our exploration delves into the role of this knowledge in aligning individual skills with job demands, enhancing what we term as person-job fit. Moreover, we present a moderated-mediation model to examine the interactive influence of career confidence between person-job fit and career sustainability. Data were collected in three waves from part-time students pursuing professional courses, concurrently employed in diverse industrial sectors of Pakistan. Hypotheses were tested using covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) on a final dataset ( n = 318). Our findings reveal that AI knowledge as a future work skill significantly contributes to workers’ career sustainability, both directly and through person-job fit. Additionally, higher career confidence significantly strengthens the interplay between person-job fit and career sustainability. Theoretical contributions and practical implications of the study are discussed, along with potential avenues for future research in this domain.