The Briefing:
- A new IDB analysis says broad AI adoption could grow Latin America and the Caribbean's economy by 5.1% within a decade — but only 0.3% if adoption stays limited.
- Whether wages rise or fall comes down to one factor: worker mobility. Pay could climb 2.3% to 5.3% for workers who shift into AI-driven growth sectors, or fall 13.5% to as much as 20.9% for those who can't.
- The findings, previewed during UN General Assembly week in New York, come months before the IDB's full report lands in November — and the sectors most exposed mirror the ones where Latino workers are already concentrated in the U.S.
A high-level gathering timed to the UN General Assembly
On September 21, the Inter-American Development Bank Group convened heads of state and senior government officials from a dozen countries across Latin America and the Caribbean — among them Chile's José Antonio Kast, Uruguay's Yamandú Orsi, the Dominican Republic's Luis Abinader and Panama's José Raúl Mulino — along with senior executives representing Google, Microsoft, Nvidia and Anthropic, according to the bank's own account of the meeting. The gathering, convened on the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York and described by Reuters as closed to the press, was billed as the starting point for a shared regional roadmap on rolling out artificial intelligence safely and at scale.
The number behind the headline: growth that hinges on how fast the region moves
The urgency behind the meeting traced back to early findings from the IDB's upcoming flagship report, From Digitalization to Artificial Intelligence: Turning Promises into Productivity, due out in November as the 2026 edition of the bank's annual Development in the Americas series. Under a scenario of broad AI adoption paired with large gains in labor productivity, the bank projects regional GDP could be 5.1% higher after ten years. Limited adoption and modest productivity gains would leave that number at just 0.3% — a gap of nearly 17-fold between the best- and worst-case paths.
Wages aren't simply "up" or "down" — they split on mobility
The more consequential figure in the report isn't GDP — it's what happens to paychecks, and the answer isn't a single number. According to the bank's projections, workers able to shift into AI-driven growth fields could see decade-long wage gains ranging from 2.3% to 5.3%. Those left behind — stuck in roles that stagnate or shrink as AI spreads — could see paychecks shrink by 13.5% to as much as 20.9%, per the same analysis. That's a wider, more conditional story than a flat "AI could cut wages 20%" headline suggests: the downside is real, but the bank frames it as a matter of policy, not fate, since helping displaced workers move quickly could be what separates the 5.1% growth scenario from the 0.3% one.
Why the fine print matters for Latino workers
The IDB's projections cover the region's own labor markets, not the U.S. workforce directly — but the industries most likely to be reshaped by AI-driven automation and productivity gains overlap heavily with the ones where Latino workers, on both sides of the border, are concentrated: construction, logistics, manufacturing and customer-facing service roles. In the U.S. alone, Hispanic workers now make up nearly a third of the construction labor force, according to an analysis of Census Bureau survey data — one of the clearest examples of a sector where mobility into new roles, not AI adoption alone, will decide who comes out ahead. A separate World Bank study found that up to 17 million jobs across Latin America and the Caribbean may be unable to capture AI's productivity gains simply because of gaps in digital infrastructure — a reminder that access, not only skill, shapes who moves up and who falls behind.
What comes next
At the same New York gathering, IDB President Ilan Goldfajn pushed a related agenda item: more financing and long-term price guarantees for the region's critical-minerals supply chains, floating a minimum-price system for buyers that he called a "buyers' club." The full Development in the Americas report, due in November, is expected to lay out policy recommendations — including investment in worker retraining and digital infrastructure — aimed at pushing the region toward the 5.1% growth path rather than the 0.3% one.
