Over 200 economists and researchers-including 15 Nobel laureates-are urging governments and employers to build labour-market safeguards now, before AI-driven job displacement accelerates. The joint statement, titled "We Must Act Now," warns that HR professionals may soon face a workforce transformation more abrupt than any previous technological shift.
The group, organized by economists from the University of Virginia, Stanford University, the University of Toronto, and the research organization METR, argues that AI could produce an economic upheaval larger than the Industrial Revolution but compressed into years rather than decades.
A compressed timeline
"Steam, electricity, and computers each gave societies decades to adapt. AI may give us only a few years," said Anton Korinek, an economist at the University of Virginia who also works with Anthropic's economic research team, according to a Reuters report. "We cannot improvise our strategy and institutions in the middle of the transformation; waiting for certainty means arriving too late."
The statement calls on economists, policymakers, and technology leaders to build the incentives, guardrails, and institutions needed to steer AI toward complementing human workers rather than displacing them. For HR leaders, this means workforce planning, reskilling programs, and job redesign will need to move from long-term initiatives to near-term priorities. Building that institutional capacity is a core focus of AI for Executives & Strategy training.
Nobel laureates and tech leaders sign on
Signatories include Nobel laureates Michael Spence, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, and Ben Bernanke. Corporate leaders from major AI developers also added their names: OpenAI finance chief Sarah Friar, Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean, and Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark.
The statement stops short of naming specific occupations, sectors, or timelines for disruption. It does not propose legislative or regulatory measures. Instead, it frames itself as a call to begin building institutional capacity and conducting research before the effects on labour markets become clearer.
What the data show
Projections from international bodies and research firms paint a picture of uneven displacement and job creation. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 projects 170 million new jobs created globally by 2030 against 92 million displaced-a net gain of 78 million. The International Monetary Fund estimates that almost 40% of global employment is exposed to AI, rising to about 60% in advanced economies. Goldman Sachs Research puts global exposure at roughly 300 million full-time jobs, with a U.S. displacement estimate of 6% to 7% of the workforce, or about 11 million workers.
For Canadian employers, Statistics Canada's experimental estimates found that 86% of highly educated workers held jobs highly exposed to AI as of May 2021, compared with 38% of workers with less education. PwC's 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer found that companies most exposed to AI posted 34% productivity growth since 2018 and paid AI-skilled workers a 62% wage premium, alongside faster headcount growth than less-exposed firms. In the second quarter of 2025, 12.2% of Canadian businesses reported using AI to produce goods or deliver services.
Canadian employers in construction, skilled trades, and technology may also face volatile, concentrated hiring demand as proposed data centre projects nationwide could total more than 20 gigawatts, according to a previous federal document.
Why this matters for HR professionals
HR teams are already managing talent shortages, skills gaps, and internal adoption of AI tools. The statement's urgency suggests that scenario planning, workforce analytics, and reskilling infrastructure can no longer be treated as multi-year projects. The data show that AI exposure is highest among highly educated workers-the very people many organizations rely on for innovation and management. Building internal expertise in AI for Human Resources can help teams anticipate displacement risks, redesign roles, and create retraining pathways before external pressure forces reactive cuts. The economists' message is clear: the time to build the guardrails is now, not when the disruption is already underway.
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