As artificial intelligence continues to drive China’s industrial transformation, data shows AI has emerged as the most competitive talent battleground in this spring hiring season, with companies vying to hire skilled professionals as demand soars.
In the first two months of 2026, the number of AI-related jobs increased approximately 12 times year-over-year, far outpacing the growth of the new economy sector as a whole. According to a recent report released by Maimai, a domestic recruitment platform, the proportion of AI-related occupations among all occupations in the new economy rose to 26.23% from 2.29% in the previous year.
The new economy sector refers to industries that are driven by technologies such as the Internet, big data, cloud computing, and AI, and that create new products, business models, and formats.
As demand soars, talent shortages are becoming increasingly apparent. High-performance computing engineers were in the greatest shortage at the end of February, with a supply-to-demand ratio of 1:7, meaning there was only one qualified candidate for every seven vacancies, the report said.
Other roles such as simultaneous localization and mapping, navigation algorithms, and cloud computing are also facing a talent crisis, the report said.
The growing popularity of OpenClaw’s open source AI agent has further increased the demand for roles related to AI applications. According to data from job portal Zhaopin, the number of AI-related job openings surged 455% year-on-year in the first three weeks after the Lunar New Year holiday.
These roles offer very competitive salaries. According to Maimai data, the average monthly salary for newly placed AI jobs is 60,738 yuan ($8,837), which is about 26% higher than the average salary in the new economy sector.
Experts said the surge in hiring reflects the growing demand for talent as companies accelerate commercialization of large-scale models and expand AI applications across business scenarios.
“In the next five years, the employment structure of the internet industry will exhibit three major trends: AI-centric roles, vertical specialization scenarios, and increasingly hybrid skill sets,” said Zhu Keli, founding director of the China New Economic Research Institute.
Zhu said the employment landscape will shift from a software-defined model to one characterized by the integration of hardware and software, and the convergence of the physical and digital worlds, noting that the value of employment will be more closely tied to the ability to implement technology.
Against this backdrop, major technology companies are ramping up their recruitment efforts during the spring hiring season, with the role of AI taking center stage, he added.
Alibaba’s Ant Group said earlier this month that 85% of its job openings are for technical roles, with more than 70% of them related to AI, covering areas such as large-scale model algorithms and multimodal generation.
ByteDance has announced its largest internship program ever, with plans to hire more than 7,000 interns, more than 60% of whom will be placed in AI-focused R&D roles.
Meituan has launched recruitment programs, including the year-round “BeiDou Program”, focusing on areas such as fundamental models, AI applications, autonomous driving, and intelligent decision-making.
New “basic skills”
Mo Long, chief expert at the China Institute of Labor and Social Security, said that workers “need to understand the principles of AI and effectively utilize AI tools” as digital literacy and the ability to apply AI are becoming new “basic skills”.
Mr Mo added that as skills have a shorter shelf life, lifelong learning and adaptability are essential, necessitating continuous upskilling.
AI-related skills are quickly becoming a basic requirement for job seekers, rather than an added benefit. Maimai’s report shows that 34.39% of newly posted positions explicitly require AI, or large-scale model-related skills, a significant increase from 22.35% in the same period last year.
Job seekers are actively responding to this trend. Data from recruitment platform Liepin shows that in the first week after the Chinese New Year holiday, there was a 139.67% year-on-year increase in resumes demonstrating proficiency in using AI tools.
lijiaying@chinadaily.com.cn
