A stark warning has emerged from the World Economic Forum in Davos as global leaders flag an unprecedented employment crisis looming over the world’s youth. World Bank Group President Ajay Banga and Infosys cofounder Nandan Nilekani cautioned that nearly 1.2 billion young people are expected to enter the workforce over the next 12 to 15 years, while the global economy is likely to generate only around 400 million jobs. The gap, they warned, is not just economic but deeply social and political, with the potential to destabilise societies if left unaddressed. Speaking at Davos, the leaders stres...
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5:43I'm talking about the ability to have a computer, the ability as a chemist to have a fridge for your medicines, the ability to open a hair salon, the ability to do those kinds of things. Right?
9:06Now Nandan's idea becomes real. You see what I mean?
Over the next 12 to 15 years, 1.2 billion young people in the emerging markets, this is where I'm coming from on this topic, will become eligible for a job in the sense they will come to the age of 18. And yet those very same economies are currently projected to produce around 400 million jobs. Now, we could be wrong. AI could change something, something else could change something, but we're unlikely to be wrong by 800 million people. So the issue is we have a real challenge here in terms of getting the right impetus for that growth while at the same time the real opportunity that hope and optimism and employed people whether working for someone or entrepreneurs that drive that energy that optimism that hope what it means for our grandchildren that is the topic of the day.
And when I was thinking my way through this in the early part of my time in the World Bank Group I've had the chance to work with President Thurman in his prior roles in my prior jobs and I went and asked him if he would help me and he thought about it came back to me very methodically as he has and said I will on the condition of we really do this with a drive to put effort and energy and money and capital to work so the jobs council that he's heading for us has come back with some thoughts and we'll come to that topic but the principle topic is you need infrastructure both physical and human capital you need the policies for business to flourish because it is in the private sector that jobs get created. government enables even an outstanding government like Singapore enables the private sector in Singapore to create jobs and then if you provide the right catalytic financing for that private sector particularly micro and small enterprises which is where the majority of jobs get created then you create the virtual flywheel the positive flywheel that you want infrastructure and people being educated with the right policies with the right financial services and you start getting the job engine going that's what we are here to discuss the importance of that opportunity.
So the jobs council also we deliberated a great deal about going to sectors where two things can be kept in mind. One we do not rely only on the outsourcing of jobs from the developed world to continue to be the primary source of job generation in the emerging markets because I think the political and the trade model and the geopolitics that you started your commentary with plays in that space. So we're making a conscious decision to not get into that situation. And then the second aspect was places where the impact of AI the way it is being discussed as in big AI large language models as compared to the way we are discussing it which is small AI delivered at the edge on your computer phone by local compute which can help farmers and healthcare workers and education workers do a better job. That's those two criteria were in our system. We came back to five sectors.
The first one is infrastructure. It's construction but then what it enables. The second is primary healthcare. You know the creation of a distributed network of physical and digital clinics with nurses, medical diagnostic technicians, midwives connected to doctors connected to regional hospitals. Think of that like a pyramid which allows resources to be used efficiently with technology to identify things by a doctor that a nurse could not do. Third is agriculture for small farmers and this is a topic that matters to both of us greatly. He's done a lot of work in his life in this topic. I have grown up in India. You know I'm a sort of son of Punjab even though my father was a army officer and I worked in Nestle for the first few years of my life. We were based in the Punjab collecting milk from farmers. The tragedy is farmers today don't want to be farmers. If they're microized, they sell their farm and they end up as urban poor. An objective to make them access scalable pricing and commodities and technology and markets and get them the benefit of scale which otherwise they don't lack is our third category. And the fourth category is tourism which done well creates the most jobs per dollar invested. And the fifth category is value added manufacturing. By which I mean no longer just extraction but a degree of local processing to create quality jobs in those countries.
That cannot be right in the 21st century. It is a travesty to think that electricity is not a basic human right. So if you want to build a digital public infrastructure, try doing that without electricity. How do you plan to charge your phone? A connection to the sun with your finger. And this is not going to work. So a very basic commitment is electrification.
So we've talked about getting to 300 million people by 2030 with electrification. And I'm not talking about one solar cell with one fan and one light in the house. That's not productive. I'm talking about the ability to have a computer, the ability as a chemist to have a fridge for your medicines, the ability to open a hair salon, the ability to do those kinds of things. Right? That's kind of one thing there in infrastructure, bridges, roads, airports. Everyone understands digital and power tends to get ignored a little. In the world of AI, power is going to become even more important because as we all know the consumption of electricity currently in the current models of AI is very large. Now it'll improve over time because they're busy trying to figure out ways. People like Nandan is an amazing technologist. People like him are caring about reducing the consumption of electricity per quantum output of AI. But today it's a real issue human capital. I don't mean only college and the point you raised about dignity. Let me give you a real example. The jobs of the future that will not get impacted by large language models of AI even in the developed world actually require hand to be used. nursing care, long-term care, physical trainer, dog walker. Come to Manhattan and see it. You can be people walking six dogs at a time. It's a gig thing they run. They make $5,000 a month on dog walking. Now, we taught our children that STEM education was their future. Yeah, I would argue that the first place that the impact in the developed world of really good work on AI will be in STEM jobs and Nandan and I are familiar with the banking industry. He from his Infosys days, me from being a recovering banker and this kind of banking is different. I'm talking about recovering banker and if you had 15,000 people in audit and compliance and risk with AI, you need a fraction of those. So I think there's these are challenges of different types in the developed world in the developing world and I don't I'm not trying to make one size fit all but I am trying to make the case that in the developing world we still have a chance by focusing on those three pillars of infrastructure the right business friendly policies and the right catalytic capital combined with those five sectors we have a chance to allow the next 15 years to be good years for people in these countries through DPIs and platforms through the right kind of jobs. We do have a chance and we should not let the fear of technology make us think that this is not an opportunity that exists within our grasp.
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Nilekani, N. (2026, January 24). Davos Alarm As Ajay Banga, Nandan Nilekani Flag Massive Youth Jobs Gap Facing World Economy Ahead [Interview transcript]. TOI Bharat. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/662919/
MLA
Nandan Nilekani. "Davos Alarm As Ajay Banga, Nandan Nilekani Flag Massive Youth Jobs Gap Facing World Economy Ahead." TOI Bharat, 24 Jan. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/662919/.
BibTeX
@misc{nilekani2026_662919,
author = {Nandan Nilekani},
title = {Davos Alarm As Ajay Banga, Nandan Nilekani Flag Massive Youth Jobs Gap Facing World Economy Ahead},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, TOI Bharat. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {jan},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/662919/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
