IMF chief says AI hits young entrants to work first: schools must teach judgement, not routine

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has told an event in Bangkok, held alongside the IMF and World Bank annual meetings and reported on 13 October, that AI will change around 40% of jobs worldwide, with roles "either augmented or downgraded or eliminated". She called the effect on employment "a slow moving tsunami, but a tsunami nonetheless", said some of it is already visible, and named the people to worry about first: "young people that are coming into the labor market".

Her reasoning is specific. Young people "would get into these routine, repetitive jobs and then grow up the ranks", she said, and that first rung is the work AI handles most easily. She also said AI is not yet shrinking overall demand for people, but shifting it, and that this "may not be the case in the future". Workers with AI skills are earning more, she said, while middle-skilled workers in highly automatable jobs face the most risk, especially in advanced economies.

This matters beyond the forecast. The IMF's latest outlook, published the same week, puts global growth at 3.1% in 2026 and says the AI boom is offsetting higher energy prices while adding risks. Behind those numbers is a plain question for every family with a teenager: if the routine entry-level jobs thin out, where does a young person learn the job? Singapore's President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, who spoke alongside Georgieva, said the first job after graduation "is now seeing less demand". Fortune notes the graduate placement figures it cites for Singapore are not tied directly to AI.

Dan Fitzpatrick's analysis is that this is a learning problem before it is a jobs problem. If the early rungs were where people practised judgement, then schools, colleges and employers now have to teach that judgement on purpose. The skill that holds its value is not typing a better prompt. It is knowing what good looks like, checking what a machine produces, and deciding what to do with it. Outsource the doing, not the thinking applies to a 16-year-old's coursework and to a graduate's first month at work.

For school and college leaders, the practical steps are these. Put work in front of pupils where they have to check, correct and improve AI output, and mark the reasoning, not just the answer. Make AI literacy part of careers education now, with local employers in the room to say which tasks they have already handed to AI. Do not wait for national guidance. Teachers are already ahead of policy, and the gap between schools that act and schools that wait is the equity issue to watch. For employers and business leaders, protect the entry-level roles that build judgement, rather than automating the whole first rung and hoping people appear at the next one. For parents, ask what your child's school is teaching about working with AI, and ask what first-year roles at local employers now involve.

Dan Fitzpatrick works with educators, school leaders and employers on using AI without losing the human skills that matter. His work centres on AI literacy, assessment and the question of what people should keep doing for themselves.

Dan Fitzpatrick is available for interview and comment on this story. Available today for live or pre-recorded radio, TV, podcast and print interviews, with broadcast-quality remote setup for live or pre-recorded down-the-line interviews. Contact: dan@theaieducator.io