The Mayor of London has accepted recommendations from the London AI and Jobs Taskforce, chaired by Baroness Martha Lane-Fox, alongside £18m in new funding for youth training and employment, in addition to £12m announced the previous month for small business AI adoption.
The taskforce, working with the Institute for the Future of Work, found that just over half of London’s jobs combine high AI exposure with strong capacity to adapt, while around 600,000 Londoners work in roles that are highly exposed but less able to adapt — concentrated in clerical and administrative work, disproportionately held by women, and generally paid below the London average.
A separate BusinessLDN survey of more than 2,000 business leaders found that 46% of London jobs are exposed to generative AI, against 38% nationally. Just 50% of firms have a workforce with the skills their business needs, down from 63% a year earlier, and 78% anticipate a significant future need for AI and digital skills, up from 66% in 2025.
Three measures are being taken forward: an early-warning system to track AI-driven labour market change, a partnership bringing employers, workers and educators together to redesign jobs, and a scheme pairing young Londoners with employers to shape new career pathways. The £18m includes £10.5m to extend support for around 6,000 young people not in education, employment or training, and £7.3m for careers provision across some 725 schools and colleges.
The taskforce has also asked the Mayor to seek greater devolved control over skills policy from national government. A separate 10-point plan from the BusinessLDN-Deloitte AI Steering Committee, whose members include Microsoft, Lloyds Bank and NatWest, was submitted to the Mayor’s Taskforce calling for a pan-London careers service, a real-time labour-market dashboard, and reform of national skills funding.
