EMPLOYERS are advertising fewer jobs in occupations highly exposed to artificial intelligence (AI), with hiring demand in those roles falling by nearly 10 percent relative to less AI-exposed occupations toward the end of the study period, according to a new study by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that analyzed more than 700 million online job postings across 110 economies.
The findings suggest that AI is already reshaping labor demand, even as its long-term effects on employment remain uncertain. While businesses may need fewer workers for some tasks that AI can perform, demand is also growing for workers equipped with emerging AI-related skills.
The IMF working paper, How Is Labor Demand Changing as AI Improves? New Global Evidence, examines how recruitment patterns have evolved alongside advances in AI capabilities.
The researchers found that hiring demand in highly AI-exposed occupations weakened relative to less-exposed roles during 2023 and 2024. The decline approached 10 percent toward the end of the observation period, although the estimated average reduction over the study period was smaller, at around 6 percent.
It is important to note that the figures measure changes in advertised vacancies, not actual layoffs or the total number of people employed.
One of the study’s notable findings is that the negative effect on hiring demand did not continue to intensify as AI capabilities improved.
The researchers found that the relative decline in recruitment largely stabilized after AI systems reached the ability to complete tasks requiring roughly an hour of human effort. The estimated effect remained broadly stable even as the technology advanced further.
This suggests that improvements in AI capabilities do not necessarily translate into a continuously worsening hiring outlook for exposed occupations.
Nevertheless, the findings do not establish that the risks to employment have passed. Recruitment patterns may change as adoption spreads, while businesses and workers continue to adjust to new capabilities.
The study also points to differences across economies. Advanced economies experienced stronger negative hiring effects in highly exposed occupations, while the estimated impact was smaller in emerging market economies and statistically insignificant in low-income economies.
The researchers found that the degree to which AI can complement human work matters alongside the technology’s ability to perform tasks.
Occupations with high AI exposure but limited scope for human-AI complementarity experienced a larger decline in recruitment demand, estimated at around 9.5 percent. For highly exposed occupations where AI can complement workers’ activities, the decline was smaller, at about 4.7 percent.
While recruitment weakened in some exposed occupations, employers increasingly sought workers with emerging AI-related skills.
The researchers identified 51 new AI-related skills, including prompt engineering, AI agents, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, retrieval-augmented generation and vector databases. Demand for these skills rose rapidly from 2023, particularly in occupations already highly exposed to AI.
The findings indicate that AI is creating new skill requirements even as it changes the demand for existing roles.
The study also examined recruitment patterns at more than 560,000 firms. Businesses advertising vacancies requiring emerging AI skills generally experienced faster growth in job postings than firms without such requirements, including in occupations highly exposed to automation.
For policymakers, the findings underscore the importance of preparing workers for changing job requirements through digital education, skills development and reskilling programs.
For employers, the challenge will be to identify which tasks can be automated, where AI can complement existing employees and what new skills their businesses will need.
For workers, changing recruitment patterns may increase the importance of skills that complement the use of AI.
The longer-term implications for employment will depend on how businesses adopt the technology, how job requirements evolve and how workers respond to those changes. / PHILEXPORT