On October 23, the State Council General Office formally released its AI employment opinions: the Opinions on Adapting to AI Technology Development and Building an Employment-Friendly Development Model. The document sets a clear tone: using AI's empowerment of high-quality development as an opportunity, build an employment-friendly development model — amplifying AI's positive effects on job creation, empowering traditional roles and raising employment quality, while effectively cushioning the employment-substitution shock brought by AI adoption.
On the job-creation side, the policy offers three routes. First, entrepreneurship: give full play to the role of government investment funds such as the National Venture Capital Guidance Fund and the National AI Industry Investment Fund, supporting the innovative development of AI-sector enterprises through market-oriented means; build high-level AI open-source communities and launch a batch of high-quality open-source projects, generating an entrepreneurship-driven employment effect. Second, new occupations: centered on cultivating AI application scenarios and large-scale deployment, accelerate the development of new occupations and the release of new occupational standards, expanding demand for new occupations and job types such as digital management specialists, AI engineering and technical personnel, and AI trainers; localities may add new professional-title review specialties and promptly carry out vocational skill level recognition. Third, tapping potential in traditional sectors: promote human-machine collaboration models in the intelligent development of all industrial factors and the digital-intelligent transformation of agriculture, accelerate building new AI-driven service models, expand new service-consumption scenarios such as experiential consumption and personalized consumption, and enlarge the service sector's employment capacity.
On the substitution-mitigation side, the document's wording is notably restrained and pragmatic: give priority to deploying AI in positions facing labor shortages and in high-risk environments; in labor-intensive industries, prudently manage the scope, intensity and pace of AI adoption to minimize the impact on workers; encourage companies to explore establishing an unemployment buffer period system — informing affected workers in advance before rolling out AI at scale and providing employment support for transition and reassignment.
One item easily overlooked: the document calls for dedicated surveys on the employment impact of AI adoption, continuously tracking AI penetration, job creation and substitution, and changes in skill demand; it will establish a batch of AI employment research centers to proactively study the impact of technological development on employment and income distribution. First measure the impact clearly, then talk about policy calibration.
For workers, the signal is twofold: the window for new occupations and job types is opening, but being "replaced" is no longer a distant worry. Those who can collaborate with AI and obtain new-occupation skill certification will be the first to land safely in this round of adjustment.
