Published by the World Bank in November 2025, this report assesses AI readiness gaps between high-income and developing economies. It finds that lower-income countries face lower near-term job displacement risk from generative AI, at roughly 4.5 percent of jobs, compared to 14.2 percent in high-income countries, but also have far less access to the higher-value AI-related employment opportunities emerging alongside that risk.
The report's global development framing distinguishes it from most AI labor-market research, which tends to focus primarily on high-income economies, and it has become a key reference for discussions of AI's uneven effects on the developing world.