PIOJ Warns AI Could Cost Jamaica 60,000 Jobs While UTech Students Win J$850,000 Building It

Two Jamaican headlines landed three weeks apart in the spring of 2026 and, read together, they say something no single report could. One warned that AI is coming for tens of thousands of Jamaican jobs. The other showed university students collecting a six-figure cheque, in Jamaican dollars, for building exactly the kind of AI tool the first headline was worried about.

The Warning: Up to 60,000 Jobs on the Line

On 22 May 2026, the Jamaica Gleaner reported that the Planning Institute of Jamaica had put a hard number on something Jamaicans had mostly been guessing at. PIOJ Director General Dr Wayne Henry told a gathering of business and policy figures that AI adoption could put close to 60,000 jobs at risk across the island, drawing on research out of the University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech). Of Jamaica's roughly 1.44 million-person labour force, 56,695 workers, about 4.0%, sit in the band researchers classify as high exposure. A further slice sits at medium exposure, pushing the total closer to the 60,000 figure.

The study behind the number, Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Jamaican Job Market: Quantity and Quality, led by UTech's Dr Paul Golding, complicated the usual assumption that AI would only threaten low-skill, repetitive roles. The research found the risk reaching into fields built on heavy computation, actuarial work among them, and landing hardest on female-dominated occupations, particularly clerical roles and call centre work, the backbone of Jamaica's large business process outsourcing sector.

Dr Henry was careful not to overstate certainty. "There is still some debate on the exact type and nature of jobs to be replaced," he said, while noting that AI's reach into clerical and professional work is already visible. His broader framing was less alarmist than the headline number suggested: he described the overall value proposition of AI adoption as improved productivity, not simply job destruction, and pointed the government's response toward human capital development and skills training rather than resistance.

Three Weeks Earlier, a Different Kind of Headline

Roll the calendar back to 29 April 2026 and the Jamaica Observer was covering a different story out of the same university. At the Sagicor Group Jamaica Innovation Fund's annual pitch competition, held with UTech at the AC Hotel Kingston, student teams were not being warned about AI. They were winning money for building it.

Team Connective took first prize, J$500,000, for a data-sharing platform pitched at closing information gaps between institutions. SurPath placed second, winning J$250,000 for climate-risk intelligence tools aimed at Jamaica's exposure to storms and flooding. Nexus Innovation took third, J$100,000, for an AI-powered system to speed up insurance claims processing, the exact category of clerical, document-heavy work the PIOJ later flagged as high-risk for human workers. Between the top three prizes alone, students walked away with J$850,000. Add categories for independent projects and faculty research, and the total Sagicor put on the table that day climbed higher still.

Sagicor CEO Christopher Zacca framed the competition as proof of the depth of talent coming out of Jamaica's universities. The company is not treating it as a one-off. Sagicor has invested more than J$125 million in its Innovation Lab since 2019 and commits roughly J$25 million a year to keep it running, money that funds the same UTech students the PIOJ warning is aimed at protecting.

So which is it, then? Ask a UTech computer science student and you will likely get a shrug and a straight answer: "AI a go tek some job, true, but a we a build it, so who a lose out really?" That is not spin. It is the honest version of what both headlines were describing from opposite ends of the same table.

The Public Is Not Letting the PIOJ Off Easy

Jamaicans read both stories, and the Gleaner's letters page carried the reaction. Within three days of the PIOJ warning running, a letter headlined "PIOJ must move beyond warning about AI" argued that naming a risk figure is the easy part and that the institute owed the country a sector-by-sector plan for retraining exposed workers, not a projection. A follow-up letter, "Beyond warnings: PIOJ and AI planning," pressed the same point from a different angle, asking what concrete programme, timeline, or budget line would back up the 60,000 figure.

The criticism lands because Jamaica's government has, in fairness, been doing more than issuing warnings. On 1 April 2026, weeks before either the PIOJ figure or the Sagicor prize money made headlines, the Office of the Prime Minister hosted the launch of Jamaica's UNESCO AI Readiness Assessment at Jamaica House, with Minister for Science, Technology and Special Projects Dr Andrew Wheatley and UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany in attendance. Close to 200 people from government, industry, and academia took part in building the assessment, which covers Jamaica's legal, social, economic, and educational preparedness for AI. Jamaica was among the first Caribbean countries to complete one. The Cabinet is now working from that assessment toward a National AI Policy anchored in Vision 2030. Whether that policy lands with the specificity the letter writers are asking for is still an open question in July 2026.

Why Both Stories Are True at the Same Time

The PIOJ warning and the Sagicor prize money are not contradicting each other. They are describing two sides of the same shift, and Jamaica is living through both at once. Clerical work, call centre scripts, and document processing, the tasks a computer can already do reasonably well, are the roles most exposed, and Dr Golding's research is blunt about who holds many of those jobs today. At the same time, the people who understand how to build, direct, and check AI systems are becoming more valuable, not less, and Sagicor's cheque book is one of several signals pointing that way. Global research from PwC's 2026 AI Jobs Barometer found much the same pattern worldwide: AI is splitting the labour market into two paths, one that shrinks and one that pays a premium for the ability to work alongside the technology rather than compete with it.

Jamaica's specific risk is that the country trains plenty of people for the shrinking path and not enough for the one that pays. A call centre agent whose script gets automated and a UTech student who just won J$100,000 for building the automation are, in practice, standing on either side of the same skills gap. Closing it is a training problem before it is a policy problem.

What Workers and Small Businesses Should Do Now

Waiting for a finished National AI Policy is not a plan for someone whose job is on the PIOJ's list this year. A few moves are worth making now, whether you are an employee, an employer, or a parent watching a teenager choose a university major.

• Learn to direct AI, not just use it. Clerical and call centre staff who can set up, supervise, and correct AI tools are far less replaceable than staff who only follow a fixed script.
• Push employers for reskilling, not just software. Businesses adopting AI to cut costs should be asked, directly, what the plan is for the staff whose tasks the software absorbs.
• Get formal training, not just YouTube. Programmes like StarApple AI's practical AI courses (starappleai.org) and The Genius Project's AI literacy work (beagenius.org) exist specifically for people making this switch outside a university campus.
• Watch the policy, but do not wait on it. For a closer look at how Jamaica's AI planning compares with the rest of the region, Adrian Dunkley's ongoing analysis (adriandunkley.net) tracks the gap between government readiness reports and what actually reaches the labour market.

None of this makes the 60,000 figure less real. It does mean the number is not a verdict. It is a starting line, and the students collecting Sagicor's cheques in April already had a head start.