Every leadership team I talk to right now is wrestling with some version of the same problem: they need people who can actually work with AI, and they can’t find them. According to ManpowerGroup’s 2026 Talent Shortage Survey, AI capabilities have become the hardest skill set to find anywhere in the world, a spot long held by coding and engineering. This is happening against a backdrop where 72% of employers globally still report difficulty filling roles at all.
You Can’t Poach What Doesn’t Exist. Unfortunately, I believe that many business leaders are still waiting for the right talent to show up. They are waiting for the education system to produce it and if that fails, aiming to hire it away from someone else. This model just doesn’t work here. There simply aren’t enough professionally trained, AI-fluent workers in the labor market to poach, and higher ed can’t retool degree programs fast enough to keep pace with how quickly the technology itself is moving.
That leaves only one real option: train your employees yourselves. This is a genuine mindset shift for a lot of organizations. Training has traditionally been treated as a nice-to-have, something outsourced to a university or a certificate provider. But for industry-specific AI talent, internal training may be the only pipeline you can actually count on.
The Money Is There. Once you accept that you have to build this talent yourself, the obvious next question is how to pay for it. There’s more available than you might realize.
Start with what’s likely already sitting on your books: IRC Section 127, which you may hear me refer to as the “5250 Plan.” This tax code provision lets you give up to $5,250 for education assistance per employee as a fully deductible business expense. It’s also tax-free for the employee. The cap will be indexed to inflation starting in 2027.
Mythbusting. HR policies can be really hard to change. Even though Treasury regulations allow employers to define their own education assistance terms, there are so few who take advantage of this flexibility.
- Tenure: In my experience, if you’re like most HR teams, you probably restrict access to education assistance to employees who have been with the company for at least 90 days, or even a full year. Don’t restrict its use! Doing so artificially limits the use of the funds for bringing on new employees through internal training programs like apprenticeship.
- Type of Training: Treasury regulations define qualifying “education” in this context as any form of instruction or training that improves an employee’s capabilities, not limited to degree programs or credit bearing training.
My Take. Think outside the box! Use your 5250 Plan to advocate for credible and reputable RTI providers outside of the traditional higher education system, and encourage training for both new and tenured employees. Don’t limit yourself. If you want an example, Indiana’s Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association is already working with businesses to use their plan this way for trade apprenticeship and financial service companies are upskilling staff on AI using these funds.
If more companies choose to leverage this investment for early stage talent and upskilling, I believe the 5250 Plan will become the fundamental underwriting tool for creation of a true public/private funding partnership for scaling apprenticeship programs – including those that cover AI skilling – in the future.
The AI talent shortage isn’t going to solve itself through more shrewd recruiting. It’s going to be solved by businesses like yours, willing to treat training as core infrastructure rather than an afterthought, and who take the time to leverage the funding that already exists rather than assuming they have to pay for it alone. This is exactly the role apprenticeship intermediaries like Apprenti are built to play: helping businesses stand up skilling programs, and creatively identifying and layering available federal match funding that make it sustainable.
Jennifer Carlson is Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Apprenti.
Jennifer Carlson is Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Apprenti.
