How China’s AI race is shrinking job market, forcing workers into low-paid, manual roles

For four years, Beijing-based Clare Zhang worked as a research analyst at a corporate advisory firm, helping companies assess technologies and competitors for projects they planned to list – until late last year, when she was told that artificial intelligence had reduced the number of analysts the company needed and could afford. Her job involved combing through company filings and public records to produce market and competitor studies that sometimes ran to 500 pages. But AI could increasingly collect and organise the information, analyse data and generate charts in a fraction of the time. Zhang said the company’s human resources department explicitly cited AI when dismissing her, explaining that it could no longer justify employing so many analysts. Two of her former colleagues were laid off shortly afterwards. The pressure soon spread beyond individual jobs. Zhang recently learned that her former boss was also struggling with a declining number of clients, as they increasingly brought research in-house with AI, though her team had warned clients that AI could invent sources and produce convincing but unreliable findings. “They would rather trust AI because our reports were considered too expensive,” Zhang said. In May, a Chinese court ruled it was illegal for a company to terminate an employee on the grounds that an artificial intelligence replacement would be cheaper, after a 35-year-old worker, who oversaw AI-generated responses at a Hangzhou fintech firm, was fired over refusing a demotion and pay cut. The company told him his role could be replaced by AI. While Zhang’s case predates the court’s ruling, she is among a growing number of junior white-collar workers facing pressure from AI, particularly in repetitive roles involving the collection and processing of public information, such as basic research, content production, accounting and administrative work. Over the past three years, AI has evolved from chatbots capable of generating basic text and images into increasingly sophisticated systems that can write code, analyse data, conduct research and handle customer-service tasks, forcing many to seek positions less vulnerable to replacement. After losing her job, she submitted 40 to 50 applications in her first month and explored legal work, only to find opportunities in both fields drying up. Still looking for another research position, Zhang said she was preparing for the possibility of becoming a domestic organiser, childcare worker or supermarket packer. “If nothing else works, I’ll have to do physical labour,” she said. “Those jobs are harder for AI to replace.” AI’s disruption of employment did not begin this year. The International Labour Organization already warned last year that a quarter of jobs worldwide were potentially exposed to generative AI, although transformation rather than outright replacement was the more likely outcome. In China, 33.2 per cent of 40.01 million job postings published between January and April involved tasks considered highly exposed to AI, according to a report released by ShanghaiTech University in July. Basic operations, accounting, visual content production and telephone sales were among the most vulnerable fields. The researchers analysed more than 700 million postings across five recruitment platforms between 2022 and 2026. They found that the greatest pressure fell on entry-level and mid-tier positions requiring one to three years of experience and paying between 5,000 yuan and 8,000 yuan (US$743 and US$1,189) a month, while jobs in manufacturing, healthcare, in-person care and equipment maintenance remained relatively resilient. At the same time, AI is creating new demand. A separate PwC study released in July found that AI application roles increased by nearly 90,000 last year, or 50.8 per cent, while development positions rose by about 30,500, or 15.5 per cent. [AI] has mainly stripped out the people in the middle – those who used to turn a client’s idea into a finished product Juno Zhu, Beijing “Occupations most affected by AI are absorbing new skills at a faster pace,” PwC said. “This presents both challenges and opportunities.” For Beijing-based illustrator Juno Zhu, AI has not ended his career so much as forced him to keep changing course, from hand-drawn picture books to AI-assisted comics and short-form dramas. He studied animation and spent nearly nine years building a career in visual storytelling, only to watch AI tools improve every few months and steadily reduce the number of people needed to complete a project. “People say AI creates new jobs, but I don’t think it has created many,” Zhu said. “It has mainly stripped out the people in the middle – those who used to turn a client’s idea into a finished product.” Work that once took a team of 10 can now be handled by two or three people, he said, while an entire short drama that previously required at least three months can sometimes be produced in one. Zhu has since learned to use the same tools disrupting his profession, but worries they are erasing the value of his nine years of experience. One prospective employer told him a recent graduate earning 5,000 to 6,000 yuan a month could now produce work of a similar standard with AI. Meanwhile, changing industries offered little comfort. Zhu said employers increasingly wanted people who could contribute immediately, leaving little room for a 33-year-old newcomer to learn on the job. “They don’t support you going in and learning any more,” he said. “You have to be ready to work from the moment you arrive.”

How China’s AI race is shrinking job market, forcing workers into low-paid, manual roles

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}White-collar, corporate jobs could be in the firing line as artificial intelligence proves quicker at tasks requiring data-heavy tech skills

White-collar, corporate jobs could be in the firing line as artificial intelligence proves quicker at tasks requiring data-heavy tech skills