PCIDE Visiting Scholar Seminar Series
AI and jobs
November 18, 2026, 18:30 – 19:30 PM | Virtual

Speaker: Divya Kirti, Senior Economist, Asia and Pacific Department, International Monetary Fund

Brief Description: Asia’s export-led, manufacturing-based model has made the region an engine of global growth, but this route to job creation is getting harder to follow. Manufacturing is becoming more capital intensive, trade is fragmenting, and demographic trends are diverging sharply across the region. Artificial intelligence (AI) arrives in the middle of all these developments. Drawing on millions of online job postings from across Asia, this chapter offers some of the first evidence on how AI is already reshaping labor markets in the region. The findings raise pressing questions for policymakers about how workers and the job market will adapt to AI-driven change.

About the Speaker: Divya Kirti is a Senior Economist in the Asia and Pacific Department at the International Monetary Fund. Previously, he worked in the Research Department and the Middle East and Central Asia Department. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. His research focuses on financial intermediation and the relationship between finance and innovation. His work has been published in leading journals including the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Financial Intermediation and the Journal of Banking & Finance, and covered by media outlets such as the New York Times, Financial Times, and Bloomberg.