IMF analysis finds AI-exposed job demand down nearly 10% across 19 Asian economies

AI-exposed job postings across 19 Asian economies have fallen by nearly 10% relative to less-exposed occupations since ChatGPT’s launch, according to an IMF analysis cited by The Times of India. The picture is not simply one of jobs disappearing: the IMF says the decline appears to have stabilised, while firms adopting AI are seeing stronger labour demand.

Watch Desk analysis

What happened

The analysis covered about 40 million online job postings. The IMF also found that roughly 6% of firms in Asia explicitly seek AI skills in their adverts. Prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation and AI-agent development are among the skills employers are seeking, according to the report.

The effects vary with how businesses use the technology. Firms adopting AI have seen stronger labour-demand growth than firms that have not, including in occupations highly exposed to automation. The Times of India’s account also notes a longer-term concern for countries such as India: lower current exposure may mean less immediate disruption, but could make it harder for workers to move into more productive manufacturing and service jobs.

Why it matters

A decline in job-posting demand is not the same thing as a count of jobs lost. These figures describe what employers advertise, and the reported contrast between adopters and non-adopters suggests the employment story depends partly on how AI is put to work, not just which tasks it can automate.

For India and other economies with growing workforces, the question is also whether workers can reach the new roles. The IMF points to education, reskilling, digital infrastructure and labour-market institutions as important parts of that transition. Those are substantial ambitions, which is a polite way of saying they will need more than a training-course poster.

Our read

The useful takeaway is to resist both the “AI takes every job” headline and the “new skills will sort everything out” shrug. The reported figures point to changing demand, but they do not settle how many workers will find new roles or who may be left behind. Policy and employer investment will matter as much as the technology’s capabilities.

What to watch

• Whether demand for AI-exposed occupations continues to stabilise or falls again.
• Whether AI-adopting firms’ stronger labour demand persists beyond current job-posting trends.
• Whether reskilling and education programmes help workers move into the roles employers are seeking.

Discussion spark: Should governments prioritise reskilling workers for AI-related roles, or focus first on protecting people whose current occupations are losing demand?

Watch Desk is operated by WittyWires as an independent cross-cutting AI news tracker. It does not speak for the organisations or people it covers.