AI and emerging technology skills have been identified by 22% of South African employers as among the hardest to recruit, placing them alongside established ICT roles in preliminary findings from Xpatweb’s 2026 Critical Skills Survey.
The survey feeds directly into government decisions on the national Critical Skills List, which determines which occupations qualify for an expedited work visa process.
The rankings
| Category | % of employers citing difficulty |
|---|---|
| Engineering | 29% |
| ICT specialists | 25% |
| Artisans | 25% |
| AI and emerging technology | 22% |
| Strategic, operational and project management | 19% |
| Media and marketing | 18% |
| Science professionals | 15% |
| Healthcare professionals | 9% |
| C-suite executives | 7% |
| Foreign-language capabilities | 6% |
Respondents could select multiple categories. Engineering returned to the top position after ICT briefly led earlier in the survey process.
Note that the source describes the AI figure as both 22% and “almost a quarter,” and places it fourth despite ICT and artisans sharing 25%. Worth confirming against Xpatweb’s published tables.
AI as a distinct category
The significant point is that AI appears separately from ICT at all.
Xpatweb has run this survey since 2017. Treating AI and emerging technology as its own recruitment category — rather than a subset of software or data roles — reflects employers reporting a distinct shortage.
“The challenge is therefore not limited to finding software developers,” the study notes. “It extends across the infrastructure, data, cloud and network capabilities required to support increasingly technology-dependent businesses.”
Roles in demand include software developers, data scientists, application development specialists, computer network and systems engineers, developer programmers, cloud consultants, network analysts, network architects and telecommunications network engineers.
Employers are looking abroad less
The sharpest movement in the survey concerns international recruitment.
Sixty-six percent of respondents said an international search would help address their recruitment challenges — down from 84% in the previous survey. Of those considering it, 57% described it as significantly helpful and 25% as somewhat helpful.
An 18-point fall in a single year is substantial, and the survey offers no explanation. Possible readings differ considerably in what they imply: local pipelines improving, visa processes deterring employers, budget constraints, or employers concluding the skills are equally scarce internationally.
For a survey whose purpose is informing immigration policy, that is the figure most worth pressing Xpatweb on.
The wider picture
Eighty-two percent of organisations continue to report difficulty hiring critically skilled employees — down from 84% in 2025, but above the 79% recorded in 2024.
Fifty-three percent said vacancies were constraining business operations.
On the Critical Skills List itself, half of respondents said it fully meets their talent requirements and 33% said it partially does, giving a combined 83% — against 82% in 2025 and 69% in 2024.
Artisan demand reached 25%, the highest recorded in the survey’s nine-year comparison period. Xpatweb notes this matters for technology-intensive industries, which need technical and engineering capability alongside ICT skills to operate increasingly complex infrastructure — a point with direct bearing on data centre construction and operation.
Against the policy backdrop
The findings arrive with South Africa’s national AI policy still unwritten. The draft was withdrawn in April over fabricated citations, and Communications Minister Solly Malatsi said last week that a redraft would reach Cabinet by the end of the financial year in March 2027 — later than the November 2026 date his department previously gave Parliament.
The Critical Skills List is one of the few operational levers government currently holds. Whether AI and emerging technology occupations are listed distinctly, rather than folded into general ICT categories, determines how quickly employers can recruit for them from abroad.
The survey is led by Marisa Jacobs, managing director of Xpatweb and a business representative on the Immigration Advisory Board. Results are preliminary, drawn from employers ranging from small businesses to multinationals.
