AI sector a bright spot in tough jobs market for China’s graduates, as ChatGPT frenzy spurs new employer demand
- China’s youth jobless rate has hit a new high, with conditions mostly tough for the country’s 11.6 million fresh graduates
- Job offers for graduates with degrees in large language models and related areas of AI have surged, according to Liepin report
While China’s youth jobless rate has hit a new high and with conditions mostly tough for the country’s 11.6 million fresh graduates, those with degrees related to large language models (LLMs), the AI technology behind the rise of Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT, are in short supply.
In this space, the number of related job openings has surged 172.5 per cent from a year earlier, according to Liepin’s 2023 employment report for Chinese university graduates.
San Francisco-based OpenAI launched its conversational bot ChatGPT last autumn, setting off a global AI arms race, with Chinese Big Tech firms rushing to launch similar services.
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A local headhunter said earlier that the explosion in demand for AI jobs started a while ago.
“Since late last year, we have been getting increased inquiries from local tech firms looking for talent working in LLMs and AI-generated content, and some are willing to offer fat pay cheques,” Max Xiao Mafeng, co-founder and CEO at recruitment agency TTC Consultancy, told the Post in April.
Roles involving algorithms, deep learning, and natural language processing (NLP) – all critical to developing ChatGPT-like services – are among the most popular jobs in the LLM area.
A student who majored in NLP at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China – located in Chengdu, capital city of Sichuan province – said in a Thursday post to career-focused social networking site Maimai that he has already landed five offers from companies including Meituan, Shein, Xiaomi, battery marker CATL and logistics giant SF Express.
Apart from AI, employment opportunities in the new energy and new materials sectors saw 93.9 per cent and 30 per cent year-on-year increases respectively, making them the second- and third-fastest growing sectors for job increases among the 18 emerging areas Liepin analysed in the report.
China’s expected 11.6 million college graduates this year – a record – comes at a time when the country’s youth unemployment rate for those aged between 16 and 24 has also hit a record high, reaching more than 20 per cent in April.
More than 60 per cent of students surveyed in the Liepin report have not secured a job offer yet.
Meanwhile, despite a much tougher regulatory environment in recent years that has seen thousands of lay-offs, the country’s Big Tech firms are still the top choice among elite school graduates in China. Overseas returnees had a preference for multinationals, according to the report.
Overall, Chinese graduates expressed an increasing preference for job security over other factors, with employment in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and governmental agencies top choices.
Nearly half, or 45 per cent of students, wanted to work at SOEs, versus almost 27 per cent for governmental agencies, according to the report.
