IMF Chief Warns AI Disruption Is a «Slow-Moving Tsunami» for Young Workers

Young people entering the workforce face the sharpest consequences from artificial intelligence, according to International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, who described the coming labor market upheaval as a «slow-moving tsunami» that is only beginning to reshape employment worldwide.

Speaking at an event tied to the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok, Georgieva said the first group policymakers should worry about is young people just starting their careers. Entry-level routine and repetitive jobs have traditionally served as the bottom rung of the professional ladder, giving new graduates a foothold before they advance. If those roles disappear, she warned, the consequences extend far beyond a first paycheck. «I don't think any young person wants to be a barista in a coffee shop as their professional future,» she said.

The IMF estimates that roughly 40% of jobs globally will be augmented, downgraded, or eliminated as AI technology advances. Georgieva said the shift is already visible: workers with AI-related skills are commanding higher pay, but that premium has not translated into broad-based job growth. Lower-paying positions, including restaurant work and data-center construction, are expanding, while middle-skilled workers whose jobs are highly exposed to automation risk being left behind. Advanced economies are expected to feel the impact particularly strongly.

Georgieva pushed back on the idea that AI is simply reducing demand for human labor. «Burst the myth that AI is shrinking demand for people,» she said. «What it is doing is shifting demand for people now. That may not be the case in the future.»

Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, who shared the stage with Georgieva, said the weakening of the first rung of employment is already measurable. In Singapore, 74.4% of university graduates secured full-time positions in 2025, down from 79.4% in 2024. Shanmugaratnam argued that governments should treat the problem as a long-term structural challenge rather than waiting for it to become a crisis, pointing to policy responses after the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic as possible models.

Without intervention, he warned, a domino effect could take hold, with more graduates competing for fewer jobs. «We can't afford to lose that because if you lose that, you not only have that cohort of young people waiting a year and then competing with the next cohort the next year, you lose more than one year of skills,» he said. «You lose a whole set of intangible attributes, and you lose trust in the future.»

That erosion of trust has already spilled into public life in France, where hundreds of thousands of students have protested over deteriorating school facilities and demanded greater education funding.

Georgieva said it is not too late to build defenses against the disruption. Governments need to rethink education for a world in which workers can no longer expect to learn one set of skills and rely on it for an entire career. She also pointed to the fiscal stakes: major labor market disruptions reduce spending, which in turn shrinks tax revenues and leaves governments in a difficult financial position.

Not everyone shares the grim outlook. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has acknowledged that AI has yet to eliminate entry-level white-collar jobs at the pace he once expected. «I'm delighted to be wrong about this,» Altman said in an interview earlier this year, adding that he thought more such roles would have disappeared by now. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who previously warned that AI could eliminate half of white-collar jobs, has offered a more nuanced view, suggesting that if 90% of a job is automated, workers may focus on the remaining 10% and become far more productive.

President Donald Trump has also struck an optimistic tone, saying AI will ultimately create more jobs than it destroys and predicting labor shortages so severe that robots will be needed to fill open positions.

For now, the IMF's message is that the disruption is unfolding gradually but steadily, and that the workers most exposed are those with the least experience and the fewest alternatives.

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Connor Quincy

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Connor Quincy covers public affairs, politics, business, culture and daily news for Core Memo. The role focuses on verification, context, and clear explanations for readers.

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