AI developments lead to large job demand growth

Positions related to new productive forces, such as artificial intelligence and large-scale models, have become hotspots in this year's job market, with some roles offering high salaries to attract talent, Securities Times reported on Wednesday.

At a large-scale job fair held in Shanghai on Saturday, the venue was crowded with job seekers despite the cold weather.

The event, with the participation of 1,000 companies offering 20,000 jobs, had a section for industries related to new productive forces, that attracted 22 companies known for innovation and technology.

Among them were companies like Transwarp, a data provider in large-scale modeling, and MoSeeker, a domestic company that provides digital recruiting solutions.

These tech firms offered positions such as algorithm engineers, product managers and community operators.

The development of large-scale models has reached a crucial stage, empowering various industries and requiring a diverse range of talents in areas such as data processing and model training, said Zhang Jiaqing, co-founder and chief marketing officer of OpenCSG, a Beijing-based company that provides oversight and training solutions for large language models.

Demand for talent in this field has surged with the emergence of the text-to-video model, Sora, which has enhanced AI-generated text-to-video capabilities, bringing unprecedented visual impact.

According to recruitment portal Liepin, new job listings in AI-related domain increased by 612.5 percent compared to the previous year's first week after the Spring Festival holiday, with an average annual salary reaching 443,700 yuan ($61,632).

Algorithm engineers and product managers topped the list of most sought-after positions in the field of AI-generated content (AIGC), accounting for 18.95 percent and 12.63 percent, respectively.

Product manager positions in the AIGC field received nearly ten times more applications compared to the previous year.

Another trend reflected from the job market is how the manufacturing sector continues to see a rise in job opportunities, driven by ongoing industrial upgrading.

Data from Zhilian Recruitment shows that the manufacturing industry accounted for four seats in the top ten industries in terms of year-on-year growth in the number of job openings in the first week after the Spring Festival holiday (Feb 18 to 23).

The automotive and industrial automation industries saw growth rates of 15.2 percent and 15.8 percent, respectively.

The first week after the Spring Festival holiday saw an increase in both job demand and job seeker activity when compared to last year, an indication of a busy recruitment market.

Liepin's data shows that new job postings on its platform during the first week after the Spring Festival holiday increased 23.6 percent over the same period last year, the highest growth in nearly five years.