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Alice Li

Will artificial intelligence dampen China’s already sluggish job market? According to various employment sites, openings for AI professionals are surging across a range of sectors.
Recruitment platform Zhilian Zhaopin reported on Wednesday that listings on the site for AI product managers rose by 81 per cent year on year while demand for technical positions – such as AI engineers and AI data trainers – grew by 17 per cent during the same period.
“Companies across all sectors are now hiring AI engineers and AI product managers, whereas in the past, it was basically just the top-tier tech giants,” Chinese news outlet Caixin quoted Zhilian Zhaopin vice-president Li Qiang as saying.
The Caixin report published on Friday did not specify the number of openings posted for the positions.
Demand for AI product managers has also soared on recruitment platform Maimai.
In its “2025 Talent Migration Report”, the company said the biggest growth in demand across all job categories was for AI product managers, with the number of advertised positions growing by 369.4 per cent year on year.
That was followed by 248.7 per cent increase in demand for large language model algorithm engineers.
Nevertheless, China’s job market continues to be sluggish amid slowing economic growth, ensuring high popularity for stable career paths such as the civil service.
China’s youth unemployment rate stood at 16.3 per cent in April, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The figure was down from 16.9 per cent in March, but 0.5 percentage points higher than the same period last year.
With AI rapidly advancing in areas such as content generation, image creation, data processing, coding and decision support, concerns over its impact on employment remain widespread.


According to the World Economic Forum’s “Future of Jobs Report 2025” released in January that year, 92 million jobs are expected to be “displaced” worldwide by 2030 due to factors including advances in technology. At the same time, 170 million new jobs will be created, resulting in a net increase of 78 million jobs.
“Artificial intelligence and information processing technologies that are expected to have the biggest impact [of the nine technologies covered by the survey] – with 86 per cent of respondents expecting these technologies to transform their business by 2030,” the report said.
Adeline Yong, an English major who will graduate from Tsinghua University this summer, has accepted an offer to become an AI product manager at a Chinese tech company.
She said many students with art, literature or business backgrounds were now able to enter AI-related fields due to strong corporate demand and lower technical barriers.
“Anyone can build their own product with AI now – just use vibe coding,” she said. “You don’t necessarily need technical skills to work in AI-related fields.”
She said that even when responsibilities were largely the same, AI-related roles tended to offer higher salaries than similar positions not tied to AI.
“I think in the future, tech product design will depend less on technical barriers, and more on user experience and human-centred thinking,” Yong said.
“In that sense, people with humanities backgrounds may actually have an advantage in this field.”


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Companies across all sectors are advertising positions linked to artificial intelligence, recruitment firms report


Companies across all sectors are advertising positions linked to artificial intelligence, recruitment firms report.


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Wanted: AI professionals to lean into China’s surging demand for future tech

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Companies across all sectors are advertising positions linked to artificial intelligence, recruitment firms report

Companies across all sectors are advertising positions linked to artificial intelligence, recruitment firms report