Fed chair Kevin Warsh says nobody knows what AI will do to jobs over the next 12 to 18 months

Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh says AI's effect on US jobs over the next year to 18 months is unknown, even as he calls it the biggest economic change of his lifetime. Speaking in a fireside chat at the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok on 16 October 2026, Warsh said: "I would say that the advent of this new technology is probably the most consequential change to the US and the global economy in my lifetime to this point." AI will "change the real economy, but we don't know in the next 12 or 18 months its effect on employment", he said, and the path to its gains is likely to be "bumpy", both in understanding the technology and because "we really don't know what the market structure is going to be." He described himself as optimistic, but said that optimism is "leavened by the seriousness of purpose to the day jobs that you and I have." Warsh sets US interest rates, and the Fed's mandate includes maximum employment, so his uncertainty about the labour market carries weight for policy. At the same meetings IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva warned that AI "may be so capable that it could also replace some of the very jobs it creates."