The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says AI is already reshaping labor markets on a scale that rivals a natural disaster.
In an interview with NDTV, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva says the technology’s impact is sweeping and unavoidable.
She says IMF research estimates that a large share of the global workforce will be affected in some way.
“The studies we carry out, including studies of what is actually happening already in the labor market, confirm that AI is like a tsunami hitting the labor market. The size of the impact we estimate to be 40% of the workforce globally, either jobs enhanced, eliminated or transformed significantly. In the advanced economies, this percentage goes up to 60%.”
Georgieva points to early signals already visible in hiring patterns.
“One: intern jobs now require AI skills, one or more, and it pays more. When people have more money in their pockets in the local economy, they spend more on services, and that creates demand for low-skill jobs.”
While AI might boost the local economy, Georgieva warns that not all segments of the workforce will benefit equally.
“Who gets squeezed? Jobs in the middle. Jobs that are impacted may be phased out. And the category of jobs we worry particularly about, and the evidence is there, this is happening, are entry-level jobs. Their tasks can usually be automated.”
Georgieva’s comments echo Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s view that AI would wipe out 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs and push unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years.
And in January, Oxford Economics found that recent graduates contributed roughly 12% of the increase in the national unemployment rate since mid-2023.
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