Smart tech reshaping hiring trends, workplace dynamics

The accelerating adoption of artificial intelligence is increasingly reshaping hiring trends and workplace dynamics, as companies race to recruit AI talent while workers scramble to adapt to the technology's growing influence, a recent report showed.

According to a 2026 spring recruitment report released by recruitment platform Maimai this month, job postings in China's new economy sectors rose 22.6 percent year-on-year in the first four months, while AI-related positions surged 8.7-fold during the same period.

The new economy sector refers to industries driven by technologies such as the internet, big data, cloud computing and AI, which give rise to new products, business models and formats.

The rapid rise of AI also drives broader changes in China's labor market, with more than 20 of the 72 new occupations identified over the past five years being directly related to AI, data from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security showed in March.

Against this backdrop, competition for AI talent has intensified across the country's technology sector as companies speed up AI deployment.

"Demand for AI application talent is definitely set to surge," said Lin Fan, founder and CEO of Maimai."We have seen that it is no longer just major technology companies and large-model developers competing for talent. Firms in embodied AI, smart hardware and intelligent driving have also joined the race."

In this regard, the report also showed that the competition for talent has gone beyond established tech giants to rising players. Companies such as ByteDance, DJI, Xiaohongshu, Tencent and Meituan remained among the hottest recruiters this spring, while AI startups such as MiniMax and smart appliance company Dreame Technology also entered the top 20 most active recruiters.

High-end AI positions are also commanding significantly higher salaries. AI scientists and AI leadership roles topped the salary rankings with an average monthly salary of 132,796 yuan ($19,521), becoming the only category exceeding 100,000 yuan per month. Other high-paying roles included AI infrastructure engineers, large-model algorithm researchers and AIGC (AI-generated content) algorithm engineers, the report showed.

By contrast, programmers are among the first groups feeling the pressure brought by AI-driven development. According to the report, 38.51 percent of surveyed programmers said their companies have incorporated AI capabilities into performance evaluations, with 54 percent having already experienced workforce adjustments at their companies in the past year. In response, 39.1 percent chose to stay in their current positions and improve their skills, while 25.7 percent planned to move into AI development roles.

"The proportion of AI-assisted coding in my work has reached 90 percent, or even higher," said Chen Feng, a back-end engineer at a major tech company, adding that he has felt the shift becoming particularly evident since the beginning of this year.

"In this sense, the ability to come up with ideas has become especially important," Chen said. "As AI continues to evolve, what the industry really needs are people who know how to effectively work with AI."

Despite the hiring boom, however, competition for jobs has eased somewhat overall. The Maimai report showed that the talent supply-demand ratio in the new economy sector fell from 2.45 to 2.09, meaning that roughly two candidates compete for one position. Meanwhile, average monthly salaries rose 12.13 percent year-on-year to 49,600 yuan.

lijiaying@chinadaily.com.cn