Get ready for an AI jobs tsunami - IMF | Human Resources Director

Singapore's president says AI is already cutting demand for graduates' first jobs, as the IMF warns 40 per cent of jobs will be affected

By Stephen Owens

13 Oct 2026

_{Image: World Bank Group/ Grant Ellis This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.}

Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, warned on Monday that artificial intelligence poses a lasting threat to jobs, speaking on the opening day of the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok.

"It is a slow-moving tsunami, but [a] tsunami nonetheless," managing director Kristalina Georgieva said on Monday, according to Bloomberg. She added that the technology was already hollowing out demand for routine, repetitive work while adding lower-paid jobs in sectors such as construction, which she called "not a story to celebrate".

Singapore's President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, speaking at the same meetings, said AI was already reducing demand for graduates' first jobs.

"There is a particular problem that we have to address very soon... and that is that, the first rung in employment, your first job upon graduation, is now seeing less demand," he said, Reuters reported. "The evidence is already very clear, it's clearest in the most AI-exposed sectors."

Singapore's own figures show the pressure. Just 74.4 per cent of 2025 university graduates in the labour force found full-time work, down from 87.5 per cent of the 2022 cohort, and the share unemployed and looking for work rose to 10.5 per cent from 3.6 per cent, according to the Ministry of Education's Joint Autonomous Universities Graduate Employment Survey.

IMF puts exposure at 40 per cent of jobs

Georgieva said the IMF expects about 40 per cent of jobs worldwide to be augmented, downgraded or eliminated by AI over time. The estimate builds on IMF staff research first published in January 2024, which put exposure at roughly 60 per cent of jobs in advanced economies, 40 per cent in emerging markets and 26 per cent in low-income countries. That research also found about half of the exposed jobs in rich economies could benefit from AI rather than lose out.

More recent IMF work uses job advertisements rather than exposure estimates. In a January 2026 blog post drawing on millions of online vacancies, Georgieva wrote that one in 10 job advertisements in advanced economies now asks for at least one new skill. In regions with strong demand for AI skills, employment in AI-vulnerable occupations was 3.6 per cent lower after five years than in regions with weaker demand. The same analysis pointed to emerging US evidence that generative AI is reducing entry-level hiring, particularly where tasks can be automated.

Workers with new skills are being paid more for them. The IMF found advertised roles that include a new skill pay about 3 per cent more in the UK and US, and up to 15 per cent more in the UK for roles asking for four or more new skills. HRD has also reported on salary premiums for AI-skilled staff.

Junior roles and the leadership pipeline

Entry-level roles are where most organisations train their future managers, and HR leaders worry that AI is removing the tasks that made that training possible.

PwC's 2026 AI Jobs Barometer found the most AI-exposed junior roles are seven times more likely than the least exposed to demand senior skills such as leadership, while "seniorised" junior roles have grown 35 per cent since 2019. A Talogy survey of 207 senior HR and talent leaders found 78 per cent are worried about the long-term loss of critical leadership skills as AI takes over tasks once used to train junior staff.

"As organizations rethink employee development, teaching employees how to work alongside AI tools simply isn't enough," said Ali Shalfrooshan, Talogy's director of science strategy.

In a Cognizant and Pearson study of HR leaders in the US, UK and India, 96 per cent said entry-level roles would evolve into positions supervising or managing AI systems within five years, and 85 per cent still consider those roles essential. Yet 46 per cent said their organisations are not proactively arranging AI training, even though 91 per cent reported a rise in employee requests for it over the past year.

Remote work may also play a part

The cause of the junior hiring slump is not settled. A May 2026 working paper by researchers at the University of Warwick, the London School of Economics and Oxford's Ellison Institute of Technology, examined by HRD Asia, found that once exposure to remote work was taken into account, much of AI's apparent effect on junior hiring faded. Other research points the other way: a Harvard working paper found junior employment fell by about 9 per cent at firms that adopted generative AI, six quarters after adoption, relative to firms that did not.

If remote work is part of the cause, employers have more control over the outcome, through onboarding, mentoring and the amount of in-person time given to new starters.

AI investment and growth

Georgieva also said AI investment is supporting the world economy. She described the boom as a "demand shock, an investment shock" that could lift growth in advanced Asian economies by half a percentage point to a full point, Reuters reported, and said it was keeping global growth at around 3 per cent despite an energy supply shock. The IMF's full World Economic Outlook, with updated forecasts, is due on Tuesday.

She also flagged a longer-term risk for governments: by tilting economies towards capital and away from labour, AI could erode the taxes on work that have traditionally been governments' main source of revenue.

Georgieva said policymakers should act now. "We cannot today imagine what exactly the world of work will be five years from now," she said. "But we can be disciplined and carefully assess what is happening, and then draw lessons, but – most importantly – act on them now."

What HR teams can do now

The research covered here points to five practical steps for employers.

Audit junior hiring. Compare entry-level hires by team over the past three years with where AI tools and remote work were rolled out, to see which change tracks the decline.
Train graduates on AI from day one. Cognizant and Pearson found 46 per cent of organisations are not proactively arranging AI training, despite rising requests from employees.
Redesign entry-level roles. The same study describes the AI-era junior employee as an "air traffic controller" who checks AI output and escalates cases that need human judgement.
Protect in-person learning. Plan mentoring and office time for first-year staff, since research covered by HRD Asia links remote work to weaker junior hiring and less feedback for new starters.
Start leadership development early. Talogy's research argues for building judgement and collaboration skills at the start of a career, before AI removes the tasks that used to teach them.