The International Monetary Fund has its warning that artificial intelligence could disrupt 40% of jobs worldwide, even as the technology helps sustain global economic growth.

Speaking at the opening of the October 2026 International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok — the institutions’ main annual gathering of finance ministers, central bankers and development officials — IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, who has led the fund since 2019, described AI as “a slow-moving tsunami” guaranteed to structurally alter the workforce. She noted that she now receives daily automated briefings from her own AI assistant.

“It is a transformative technology. It so completely changes how we work and how we live,” Georgieva warned.

Her core message is that AI threatens to eventually augment, downgrade, or outright eliminate 40% of all jobs worldwide — an anxiety that has grown globally since the advent of the AI economic boom.

The warning is not a sudden shift in institutional thinking. Georgieva is amplifying the findings of the IMF’s January 2024 staff analysis, titled “AI Will Transform the Global Economy. Let’s Make Sure It Benefits Humanity.” That report detailed how almost 40% of global employment is exposed to AI disruption, a figure that rises to 60% in advanced economies. The Fund also noted that 10% of jobs in the United States already demand active artificial intelligence proficiency, a sign the disruption is already underway.

Independent analyses reinforce the IMF’s projections. Goldman Sachs Research estimates that 300 million jobs globally are exposed to automation by artificial intelligence. While the investment bank maintains that automation does not automatically equal immediate job elimination, it explicitly warns that AI-related headwinds have been strongest among entry-level workers. Across major developed economies, employment growth in AI-exposed industries such as information and communication services has already noticeably slowed since 2022.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO), the United Nations labour agency, paints an equally concerning picture. A joint study from the ILO and Poland’s National Research Institute places roughly one-quarter of global employment in occupations with direct exposure to generative AI. The ILO warns that developing countries risk experiencing massive labour market disruption long before they see tangible productivity benefits, lacking the digital connectivity and social protection systems required to cushion the blow.

The McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of consultancy McKinsey, offers a sobering timeline, projecting that by 2030, activities accounting for up to 30% of hours currently worked across the US economy could be automated. Generative AI is accelerating that trend, moving the threat beyond physical and directly into cognitive tasks. The Geneva-based World Economic Forum estimates that within just four years, the global transformation of the labour market could create 170 million new jobs while displacing around 92 million.

A paradox at the heart of the AI boom

Georgieva highlighted the central paradox of the AI era: the disruption arrives dressed as economic salvation. She noted that the technology has already triggered a massive “demand shock and an investment shock,” with billions of dollars flowing into physical infrastructure such as large data centres and advanced microchips.

That capital surge is keeping global GDP growth afloat at approximately 3%, and Asian manufacturing hubs are reaping a short-term windfall from supplying the hardware required for AI development. Yet the investment-driven expansion masks an underlying erosion: capital is surging while human labour is hollowed out underneath.

Entry-level roles under the greatest pressure

The hollowing out is most severe at the bottom of the corporate ladder. Speaking alongside the IMF chief, Singaporean President Tharman Shanmugaratnam — a former deputy prime minister of the city-state — delivered a sharp warning about the disappearance of the entry-level job. Automated workflows are wiping out junior roles, leaving recent graduates stranded without a viable pathway to gain the professional experience needed to move up. The middle class is being squeezed, with dislocated workers forced downward into lower-paying physical sectors such as basic construction or server maintenance.

A widening hole in public finances

The shift also poses a structural problem for modern governance. As economic value migrates away from human labour and consolidates within capital and corporate software, government tax revenues — built for decades almost entirely on the taxation of salaried workers — face mounting pressure. When automated systems absorb routine white-collar tasks, corporate profitability rises while income tax receipts fall. State treasuries could be starved of revenue just as displaced workers require unprecedented public support, forcing governments to reimagine how they tax corporate productivity to avoid a fiscal spiral.

“Small AI” for developing economies

Global financial institutions are searching for compromise responses. World Bank President Ajay Banga, the former Mastercard chief executive who has led the bank since 2023, used the Bangkok meetings to champion the concept of “small AI” to support developing economies. Instead of relying on massively expensive large language models, Banga argued for targeted, smaller-scale applications designed to boost productivity in agriculture and primary healthcare — a strategy intended to generate practical value without requiring exorbitant infrastructure investments.

But “small AI” cannot on its own plug a 40% hole in the global labour market. The AI investment boom is currently offsetting the drag of energy supply shocks and ageing populations, but it is doing so in part by displacing the workforce that underpins consumer demand.

The concerns add up to a core tension: if GDP expands while paycheques shrink, growth figures risk measuring capital accumulation rather than broad prosperity. And if capital captures every dollar of AI-driven productivity while workers absorb the full force of displacement, the technology propping up today’s growth could undermine the consumer demand needed to sustain tomorrow’s economy.