AI Will Hit 40% of Jobs, IMF Warns. Young People Are First in Line

Artificial intelligence spending is keeping the world economy growing at roughly 3% a year even as an energy shock drags on most countries, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said Monday in Bangkok.

Georgieva spoke on the opening day of the IMF and World Bank annual meetings, which run through October 18 in the Thai capital. The biggest winners, she said, are the Asian economies that build the hardware behind AI, where adoption could add 0.5 to 1 percentage point a year to growth in advanced economies and 0.2 to 0.8 points in emerging ones.

A percentage point is the raw gap between two growth rates, so an economy growing 2% that gains a full point grows 3%, which is a lot. Georgieva said the high end of that range would more than offset the drag from aging populations across the region.

In its July outlook update, the IMF found that the top four net exporters of AI hardware—Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, and Malaysia—beat its first-quarter growth forecasts by an average of 4.4% on an annualized basis, with South Korea growing at a 7.5% pace against the 1.8% the Fund had projected in April.

In a speech in Singapore last week, Georgieva said AI hardware and related tech products now make up more than a tenth of world goods trade. She added that AI investment as a share of global GDP will likely surpass what went into building the railroads or the electricity grid.

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Georgieva also warned that the boom is bypassing most countries outside that supply chain. The Fund’s July update projected 2026 global growth at 3%, down from 3.5% in 2025, as the Middle East war drove energy prices up.

On jobs, Georgieva called AI a “slow-moving tsunami” and said the IMF expects it to eventually touch about 40% of jobs worldwide, even downgrading or eliminating many of them. Exposure runs around 60% in advanced economies and roughly 23% in low-income countries, though she said poorer nations score lower mainly because AI hasn’t reached them yet.

Young people entering the workforce are first in line, she said, because AI is absorbing the routine tasks entry-level jobs are built on. Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, speaking on the same panel, said demand for graduates’ first jobs is already falling and warned that AI could widen the gap between rich and developing economies if governments don’t act.

AI could also squeeze public finances, Georgieva said, because if it shifts income from workers to the owners of capital, governments lose part of the tax base they lean on most. World Bank President Ajay Banga said the bank is backing “small AI” tools that don’t depend on large language models, aimed at farmers, clinics and classrooms in emerging markets.

Georgieva said in Singapore that the AI build-out itself is adding to inflation, and warned that disappointing earnings could spread through markets because major AI companies have borrowed heavily to fund it.

The IMF publishes its full World Economic Outlook at 9 a.m. Bangkok time on October 13, which is 10 p.m. Monday in New York, with its first revision to the 3% global growth forecast since July.