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In the October 2026 edition of the AI Training Pay Index, open AI training roles for specialists (law, medicine, coding, STEM and finance) listed a median of $80 an hour, against $39 for generalist roles (AI Work Central, aiworkcentral.com/pay-index).
What the number is
- One number per edition: the median listed hourly rate of open AI training roles for specialists, against the same median for generalist roles.
- Specialist means the fields law, medicine, coding, STEM and finance. Generalist means the roles of the Generalist field, which ask for no particular subject. Writing, languages, robotics and the trades are in neither group.
- Meridial is left out of both: it posts one platform-wide range on most of its roles, not the rate of each role.
- This rule was fixed on 15 October 2026. A change would be a new rule with its own date on the method page, never an edit of a past edition.
- Each edition holds the figures of the last day of its month and is published on the first business day of the next month; after that it does not change.
Data
The totals of this edition, with the two headline rows (section "headline"), are in pay-index.csv. The full tables and the method are on the AI Training Pay Index.
How to cite
To cite this edition:
AI Work Central, AI Training Pay Index, October 2026 edition (figures as of 2026-10-26), https://aiworkcentral.com/pay-index. Derived figures licensed CC BY 4.0.
The figures this site works out (medians, counts and percentages, on this page and in the CSV) are published under CC BY 4.0: reuse them, with credit. The postings themselves belong to the platforms and employers that publish them.
Contact
Questions about the figures or the method: [email protected].