TL;DR: Information, professional and technical services, and finance and insurance lead AI adoption by industry in 2026: 49.0%, 43.9% and 41.0% of US firms in each used AI in the two weeks to September 6, against 23.8% of all firms, according to the Census Bureau. Finance is climbing fastest, up 11.1 points since November 2025. Hotels and restaurants (10.1%), mining (8.0%) and agriculture (6.2%) trail.
Four in five US workers in the information sector used generative AI for their jobs in May 2026, according to the Real-Time Population Survey run by economists Alexander Bick, Adam Blandin and David Deming.
In hotels and restaurants, fewer than one in three did.
The order changes little from country to country. Eurostat, the UK's ONS, Statistics Canada and Australia's ABS all put information and communication first.
- 1The share of US manufacturers paying for an AI tool rose from 44.8% to 61.1% in a year, the biggest jump in the Ramp AI Index.
- 2AI use among EU construction firms more than tripled between 2023 and 2025, from 3.2% to 10.8%.
- 381% of US physicians used AI in 2026, up from 38% in 2023, the American Medical Association found.
- 4In McKinsey's 2026 survey, 31% of technology-industry respondents had scaled AI agents in software engineering, the highest of any industry and function.
The 10 Industries Leading AI Adoption in 2026
The ranking below uses the US Census Bureau's Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS), which asks US firms every two weeks whether they used AI in any business function. The latest period covers August 24 to September 6, 2026.
Nine of the ten sectors have gained since November 2025, and all ten expect to use more AI within six months.
| Rank | Industry | Firms using AI, Sep 2026 | Nov 2025 | Expect to use AI within 6 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Information | 49.0% | 41.0% | 52.1% |
| 2 | Professional, scientific and technical services | 43.9% | 34.7% | 48.5% |
| 3 | Finance and insurance | 41.0% | 29.9% | 45.9% |
| 4 | Educational services | 30.0% | 31.9% | 33.8% |
| 5 | Real estate | 29.6% | 21.0% | 35.2% |
| 6 | Health care and social assistance | 25.5% | 18.1% | 30.8% |
| 7 | Arts, entertainment and recreation | 22.6% | 18.0% | 25.6% |
| 8 | Administrative and support services | 20.8% | 15.3% | 24.2% |
| 9 | Manufacturing | 19.5% | 12.7% | 24.0% |
| 10 | Wholesale trade | 19.2% | 12.6% | 24.7% |
| All US firms | 23.8% | 17.3% | 27.6% |
1. Information
Software and IT services firms post the highest rate in the EU data: 65.7% of EU companies in computer programming, consultancy and information services used at least one AI technology in 2025, Eurostat reports.
That is more than three times the EU average of 20.0%.
Publishing, film and broadcasting come second at 56.2%. For a broadcaster or publisher, that can mean production tools, from AI video generation to translation and subtitling.
Generative AI assists with the drafting and editing that fill a content team's week.
Telecoms trail the rest of the sector. EU telecom firms sit at 39.8%, well behind software and media.
Worker-level data shows how far the lead goes: in the Real-Time Population Survey, 82.2% of US information workers used generative AI for work in May 2026, up from 59.3% a year earlier.
2. Professional, Scientific and Technical Services
Law, accounting, consulting, design and research labs sit in this sector, and legal work is where the money has gone.
US enterprises spent $650 million on legal AI applications in 2025, second only to healthcare among industry-specific tools, according to Menlo Ventures.
Thomson Reuters' 2026 professional services survey found organizational use of generative AI at 40% among legal, tax, risk and government professionals, up from 22%. Agentic AI is at 15%, with 53% planning or considering it.
The contracts behind those tools raise their own questions on data use, IP and model risk. Some firms hand that work to specialists such as Axiom’s artificial intelligence lawyer.
Scientific research is the other strong pocket: 52.1% of EU R&D firms used AI in 2025.
3. Finance and Insurance
Insurers were the heaviest AI users in the Bank of England and FCA's 2024 survey of UK financial firms: 95% used it, against 75% across all respondents. International banks followed at 94%.
US finance is gaining ground faster than any other sector in the Census data, and Canada shows the same shape over a longer run.
Statistics Canada puts finance and insurance at 40.4% in the second quarter of 2026, up from 10.9% two years earlier. That is almost level with Canada's information industries at 42.3%.
Agents are arriving here too. In NVIDIA's 2026 financial services survey, 65% of firms were actively using AI, up from 45% a year earlier, and 21% had deployed AI agents.
4. Educational Services
Education is the only top-10 sector where the share of US firms using AI fell, from 31.9% in November 2025 to 30.0%.
The survey covers private schools, training providers and tutoring businesses, and single two-week readings in small sectors move around, so the dip may be noise.
The UK tells a stronger story. In the ONS's June 2026 business survey, 50.7% of private education businesses used AI, second only to information and communication. Among US education workers, 52.6% used generative AI in May 2026.
5. Real Estate
Real estate shows the widest gap between staff and their employers. More than half of US real estate workers used generative AI in May 2026, yet under a third of real estate firms reported using AI in the September Census reading.
Agents writing listings and emails on their own accounts would show up in the first number and not the second.
Firm-level use is rising all the same. In the EU it nearly tripled, from 8.5% in 2023 to 24.8% in 2025, and 35.2% of US real estate firms expect to use AI within six months.
6. Health Care and Social Assistance
Healthcare buys more industry-specific AI than any other sector. Menlo Ventures counts $1.5 billion of US spending on healthcare AI applications in 2025, up from $450 million in 2024, and 43% of all vertical AI spend.
Clinicians are ahead of their organizations. The AMA's 2026 survey found physicians using an average of 2.3 AI use cases, up from 1.1 in 2023. Imaging is one of the clearest fits, from AI-read scans to precision targeted MRI imaging.
Canada shows the fastest climb: health care and social assistance went from 5.9% of firms using AI in 2024 to 30.0% in 2026. In the US the Census figure rose from 18.1% to 25.5% in ten months.
7. Arts, Entertainment and Recreation
Canada's arts and recreation businesses tripled their AI use in two years, from 7.7% in 2024 to 25.3% in 2026. In the UK the sector reached 32.2% in June 2026, ahead of manufacturing and retail.
Spending follows the tools: Menlo counts $360 million on AI creator tools in 2025.
8. Administrative and Support Services
This sector covers staffing agencies, call centers, facilities firms and travel agencies, and the travel agents are the story.
EU travel agencies and tour operators went from 11.4% AI use in 2023 to 35.0% in 2025, well above the 19.9% for administrative and support services as a whole. In the US, 24.2% of the sector expects to use AI within six months.
9. Manufacturing
Manufacturing is the sector where spending on AI tools grew fastest over the past year.
On Ramp's card and bill-pay data, the share of manufacturers with a paid AI purchase in the month rose from 44.8% in August 2025 to 61.1% in August 2026, ahead of retail and healthcare.
The Census measure moved from 12.7% to 19.5% over roughly the same period. Much of the work runs on machine data, such as maintenance models fed by downtime tracking software.
Within manufacturing the spread is wide. In the EU, 41.3% of pharmaceutical makers and 37.4% of electronics makers used AI in 2025, against 17.3% for manufacturing overall.
10. Wholesale Trade
US wholesalers rose from 12.6% to 19.2% in ten months, and EU wholesalers roughly tripled from 7.9% in 2023 to 23.4% in 2025.
Canada is the exception: its wholesale AI use slipped from 10.6% in 2025 to 7.9% in 2026, the only Canadian industry to fall.
Which Industries Are Adopting AI Fastest?
Measured by growth rather than level, the sectors that started lowest are moving fastest. Eurostat's comparable series runs from 2023 to 2025, and every sector in it at least doubled.
Construction and hotels and restaurants more than tripled.
Canada's hospitality sector moved furthest in relative terms. Only 0.9% of accommodation and food businesses used AI in 2024. By the second quarter of 2026, Statistics Canada put it at 12.7%.
In the US, finance leads the ten-month gain, followed by professional services and real estate. Information and construction each gained 8.0 points. Construction's gain is the biggest relative jump: its share more than doubled.
Which Industries Are Slowest to Adopt AI?
Agriculture sits at or near the bottom in every country that measures it: 6.2% of US agricultural firms, 4.5% in Canada and 3% in Australia, where only transport is lower.
Mining (8.0%), hotels and restaurants (10.1%), utilities (11.8%) and transport and warehousing (13.0%) complete the US bottom five.
These sectors are not avoiding AI tools altogether. A third of US hotels and restaurants on Ramp paid for an AI product in August 2026, while only a tenth told Census they used AI in a business function.
The gap suggests many are buying a subscription or two without building AI into how the business runs.
Which Industries Are Adopting AI Agents Fastest?
Technology and media and telecom are furthest ahead with AI agents, systems that plan and run multi-step tasks on their own.
McKinsey's State of AI 2026, a survey of 1,719 respondents run in May and June, asked where agents had reached the scaling stage.
Google Cloud's ROI of AI study asked a looser question, whether an organization had any agents in production, and got much higher shares. Telecom and manufacturing tied at the top, and healthcare and life sciences came last.
The two surveys measure different things, so their figures are not comparable: "any agent in production" is a far lower bar than "scaled within a function". Both put technology, telecom and media near the front.
For the wider numbers, see our AI agents statistics.
Does the Ranking Hold Outside the US?
Information and communication ranks first in all five official surveys, and professional services makes the top three in all five. Finance is in the top three everywhere it is counted; the EU and UK surveys leave it out.
| Survey | First | Second | Third | Lowest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US Census BTOS, Sep 2026 | Information 49.0% | Professional services 43.9% | Finance 41.0% | Agriculture 6.2% |
| Eurostat, EU, 2025 | Information and communication 62.5% | Professional services 40.4% | Energy 33.6% | Construction 10.8% |
| ONS, UK, Jun 2026 | Information and communication 58.3% | Education 50.7% | Professional services 45.8% | Construction 13.0% |
| Statistics Canada, Q2 2026 | Information and culture 42.3% | Finance 40.4% | Professional services 32.4% | Agriculture 4.5% |
| ABS, Australia, 2024-25 | Media and telecoms 38% | Professional services and finance, 24% each | Mining 18% | Transport 1% |
The same survey data drives the country picture. Our ranking of countries with the highest AI adoption rates puts the UAE and Singapore on top, and the enterprise AI adoption statistics cover the firm-size split.
Hiring for AI in the Leading Industries
The sectors at the top of this ranking are also competing hardest for engineers who can build with AI, which is where AI's effect on the job market shows up first.
Second Talent matches companies with vetted AI engineers from Asia at 50 to 70% below US hiring costs, and with agentic AI specialists for agent projects. Tell us the role you need to fill and we will come back with candidates.
Frequently Asked Questions
What share of businesses use AI across all industries?
23.8% of US firms used AI in a business function in the latest Census reading (late August to early September 2026). In the EU the figure was 20.0% of firms with 10 or more staff in 2025.
Among US workers, 45.2% used generative AI for work in May 2026.
Which industries will adopt AI next?
Census also asks firms whether they expect to use AI in the next six months. Information (52.1%), professional services (48.5%) and finance (45.9%) lead again. Real estate expects the biggest step up, from 29.6% today to 35.2%.
Why do AI adoption figures by industry differ so much?
They count different things. The Census counts firms that used AI in the past two weeks, Ramp counts firms that paid for an AI product in a month, and the Real-Time Population Survey counts workers.
A firm can have staff using ChatGPT on personal accounts and still answer no to Census.
Is healthcare the fastest-growing industry for AI?
Healthcare leads on spending, with the largest share of industry-specific AI budgets. On firm-level adoption it ranks sixth in the US, and finance, professional services and real estate grew faster over the past ten months.
