How the AI Economy Is Reshaping the Job Market

"Jobs Will Disappear" Is Only Half Right

Articles about AI destroying jobs come out every day. A McKinsey report from late 2025 said "about 14% of global jobs could be replaced by AI by 2030." In Korean terms, that's roughly 3.8 million positions.

But later in that same report, there's a line about "new jobs being created at approximately 1.3x the rate of displaced jobs." That part rarely makes the headlines. (I guess fear sells more clicks.)

What's Happening in the Developer Market

Looking at Wanted's 2026 first-half hiring data, total IT job postings dropped about 8% year-over-year. But AI/ML-related positions increased by 37%.

The key is where the cuts are happening. Simple CRUD web development, data entry, manual QA testing -- these positions have noticeably shrunk. Meanwhile, entirely new roles have appeared: AI model fine-tuning, MLOps, prompt engineering.

From what I can see, "AI is replacing developers" is less accurate than "developers who can use AI are replacing developers who can't."

Changes I'm Seeing Around Me

I have a frontend developer friend whose workload dropped about 30% after their company started using AI to build design system components. In exchange, the work of reviewing and optimizing AI-generated code has increased.

The QA team saw their manual tester headcount cut in half after AI was integrated into automated testing tools. The remaining team members now focus on test scenario design and edge case exploration.

The customer support team also downsized after an AI chatbot started handling about 73% of basic inquiries. But they're actually short on senior support staff who handle complex technical issues.

Impact on Salaries

The salary gap between developers who are good with AI and those who aren't is widening. Between two developers with 5 years of experience, having AI-related experience adds a premium of roughly 15-25 million won.

Meanwhile, traditional development positions with low AI tool adoption are seeing stagnant salary growth. Adjusted for inflation, it's effectively a pay cut.

Honestly, it feels a bit unfair sometimes. Ten years of domain expertise matters less for salary than 1-2 years of AI tool proficiency. But that's how the market is moving, so you adapt.

So What Should You Do?

One thing is clear: you need to practice integrating AI tools into your daily workflow. Whether it's Copilot, Claude, or ChatGPT -- if you're not using them, start now.

But I don't think everyone needs to make AI their career. Not every developer needs to become an ML engineer. Knowing how to leverage AI within your own domain is more realistic.

Predicting exactly which roles will survive in five years is impossible. But "people who use AI well as a tool" having better odds seems pretty certain. Then again, maybe not.