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.
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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.