Khaberni -
The Jordan Strategy Forum issued a policy summary entitled The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Labor Market: The Case of the World and Jordan to highlight the main findings of the Generative Artificial Intelligence and Jobs Report: An Improved Global Index for Occupational Exposure 2025 issued by the International Labour Organization.
The Forum also defined the impact of artificial intelligence on the Jordanian labor market in its paper, in addition to presenting some practical recommendations to mitigate its potential effects and how to enhance the labor market's ability to adapt to future technological transformations.
The importance of the report, according to the paper, lies in explaining the impact of generative artificial intelligence on existing professions and employment. The index of the report relied on analyzing job data and tasks globally (more than 30,000 functional tasks), based on the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO). The index ranges from (0 to 1), where the score (0) indicates tasks that will not be affected or replaced by artificial intelligence, while the score (1) represents the tasks most exposed and susceptible to full replacement by artificial intelligence.
In this context, the forum reviewed the methodology on which the report based its classification of profession exposure levels to the risk of artificial intelligence. The index classified professions within six levels, four of which are most affected and replaceable (the highest exposure, high, medium, and low). Meanwhile, the other two levels of jobs fell within the categories of minor exposure and relatively unaffected.
The forum pointed out in its paper that the results of the International Labour Organization’s report showed that 23.8% of jobs are susceptible to replacement by artificial intelligence (including 838 million employees), distributed about 7.5% among the highest and high exposure levels (equivalent to 112 jobs). While about 16.3% of them were within the medium and least exposed levels.
At the level of country income, the index showed that jobs in high-income countries are most vulnerable to the effects of artificial intelligence, at about 17.1%. While this percentage did not exceed 1.1% in low-income countries.
The forum explained that the exposure of jobs to the risk of artificial intelligence decreases with lower country income; thus, the percentage of job exposure in high-income countries was 33.5%, and 24.7% in upper-middle-income countries, 19.7% for lower-middle-income countries, reaching about 11.4% in low-income countries.
At the regional level, the highest percentage of job exposure to the risk of artificial intelligence occurred in European and Central Asian countries, and in the Americas at about 31.7% and 28.8% respectively. Meanwhile, this percentage decreases in Arab countries to 24.9%.
The forum also mentioned that globally, females are more susceptible than males to the risk of their jobs being replaced by artificial intelligence, at a rate of 27.7%, compared to 21.2% for males according to the report's results.
In the context of determining the impact of artificial intelligence and its tools on the labor market in Jordan, the Jordan Strategy Forum compiled the tasks making up each profession, which amounted to about 30,000 functional tasks across the seven main groups of occupations according to the results of the International Labour Organization's report on Generative Artificial Intelligence and Jobs 2025. The results were then matched with data issued by the Department of Statistics (Employment Survey) according to the main occupational groups.
The forum's analysis results showed that about 41% of the total Jordanian workforce today stands within the direct impact radius of developments in artificial intelligence and its tools, with varying degrees of risk, ranging between high exposure (7%), and medium exposure (34%). This means that a broad segment of the workforce in Jordan may face substantial changes in the nature of their tasks, or even a threat to the incumbents of those jobs if they do not keep pace with the required skills in the future.
Conversely, the forum mentioned that about 12% of the workforce might be affected minimally or lightly, reflecting that they are in professions more adaptable or more resistant to new technologies.
While the forum pointed out that approximately 47% of the total workforce in Jordan are not exposed to the risks of artificial intelligence, primarily due to the nature of these professions which rely fundamentally on direct physical effort more than mental or analytical skills, such as loading, packing, construction, cleaning, and similar activities.
The Jordan Strategy Forum recommended the need to anticipate the impact of artificial intelligence on the Jordanian labor market, how to protect its workers, and sustain their jobs, by investing in education, and vocational retraining, considering digital culture as the fundamental approach in education, and providing specialized programs for vocational and technical retraining, and enhancing collaboration between universities and industry.
The forum also called for the necessity to focus on creating new job opportunities in sectors less prone to automation, by expanding in the fields of health, education, tourism, and creative industries, which are difficult to replace. In addition to investing in renewable energy, and public projects that create jobs less susceptible to replacement. As well as supporting startups that employ artificial intelligence technologies; to improve productivity in agriculture, logistic services, and public services.
The forum emphasized the importance of urging companies that use artificial intelligence systems in their operations to conduct regular assessments to measure the potential impact on jobs, develop transition plans, and offer tax incentives for companies that adopt artificial intelligence in an integrative manner, enhancing the employment of their human labor force and increasing their productivity, instead of replacing them.
In conclusion, the forum mentioned that the challenge in Jordan lies in focusing on the quality of education, re-skilling, creating new job opportunities within targeted sectors, adopting smart legislation to regulate the use of artificial intelligence, and enhancing the social safety network. In other words, the challenge lies not in protecting current jobs, but in protecting the workers by enabling them smoothly transition to new and sustainable jobs.
