AI-related job growth is more concentrated in the metropolitan area

According to an analysis by the Bank of Korea, the number of employed workers in occupations that are easy to use generative artificial intelligence (AI) increased by 247,000 over the past three years, but most of the increase was concentrated in the Seoul metropolitan area. On the 15th, the Bank of Korea presented the report “AI and Regional Labor Markets” at a symposium held in Daejeon, explaining that as AI investment and skilled talent flock to the metropolitan area, employment and wage gaps between regions could widen further. The report examined the employment impact by dividing AI into three types: generative AI, agentic AI, and physical AI. It analyzed that occupations related to generative AI were highly applicable in office jobs, agentic AI could have a major impact in sales and legal/administrative professions, and physical AI could have a significant impact in driving/transportation and simple labor jobs in manufacturing. Of the 247,000 increase in employed workers in occupations that are easy to use generative AI from 2023 to 2025, 199,000, or 80.8%, were added in the Seoul metropolitan area. In occupations related to agentic AI as well, 88.3% of the 105,000 increase in employed workers in 2025 was concentrated in the metropolitan area. However, the Bank of Korea stated that these results should not be taken to mean that AI increased or reduced employment. It explained that since this is the early stage of AI diffusion, it is difficult to separate the effects of industry conditions, and the changes observed so far are closer to observed signals than to causal relationships.