Speaking on the opening day of the 2026 IMF–World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva described AI as "a slow-moving tsunami, but tsunami none the less."
The IMF estimates that about 40% of jobs worldwide will eventually be "augmented, downgraded or eliminated." Exposure is about 60% in advanced economies and 23% in low-income countries but Georgieva stressed that the lower figure for poorer nations is "just because AI is further away."
Georgieva warned that young graduates are first in line to be knocked down, with the first rung in employment ,the first job upon graduation now seeing less demand, according to Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, who co-chairs the World Bank's Jobs Council.
Shanmugaratnam called for governments to make "crisis-era" support measures a permanent tool, arguing that what governments did during the Covid-19 pandemic now has to be treated not as a crisis measure but as part of the structural menu of policy.
He also cautioned that China, India and developing Southeast Asia are "growing quite well, but job creation is weak," and warned that AI "is going to widen that divergence if we are too passive about it."
More recent IMF work, drawing on millions of online job advertisements, found that one in 10 job postings in advanced economies now asks for at least one new AI skill. In regions with strong demand for AI skills, employment in AI-vulnerable occupations was 3.6% lower after five years than in regions with weaker demand.
AI has also been the major driver propping up growth this year, with AI-related investments and trade helping keep global expansion near 3% despite an energy supply shock. The United States, China and India are among the most important AI supply-chain producers, meaning the technology's economic upside is not evenly distributed.
AI could help offset the economic drag from Asia's ageing populations, but the technology also threatens to disrupt jobs and widen the gap between advanced and developing economies unless governments act quickly to prepare workers.
Source : CNBC
