Journal of East China Normal University(Educationa ›› 2025, Vol. 43 ›› Issue (4): 70-103.doi: 10.16382/j.cnki.1000-5560.2025.04.007

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The Rise of Robots and the Skill Demand Structure in Chinese Labor Market: Evidence from the Chinese Recruitment Website

Yingzi Qu1, Sha Fan2   

  1. 1. Business School, Beijing Normal University, Bejing 100875, China
    2. Belt and Road School, Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai, Guangdong 519087, China
  • Online:2025-04-01 Published:2025-03-25

Abstract:

This paper tries to explore the deep logic of robots reshaping the skill demand structure based on a framework of “Education-Task-Occupation” in the traditional human capital theory, and investigates the impact of robots on skill demand structure under the framework of new human capital theory from the new perspective of cognitive skills and non-cognitive skills, utilizing job vacancy data from Chinese recruitment website and the regional robots installation data in China matched from International Federation of Robotics (IFR). The results indicate that, first, the rise of robots leads to a “single polarization” characteristic in the structure of education-attribute skill demands. Second, the rise of robots has varying structural impacts on the demands for different task-attribute skills and occupation-attribute skills. Due to workers with different educational skills being inclined to engage in different tasks and occupations, the reshaping effect on the structure of task-attribute and occupation-attribute skill demands by robot indirectly reflects the inherent mechanism of “single polarization” in the structure of education-attribute skill demands. Finally, the rise of robots has different substitution and complementary effects on various cognitive and non-cognitive skills. From the perspective of occupational heterogeneity, artificial intelligence strengthens the advantageous skills of positions while weakening the disadvantageous skills. The paper concludes by discussing how public policies can be utilized to address the structural adjustments in skill demands in the era of artificial intelligence.

Key words: robots, skill demand, task attributes, cognitive and non-cognitive skills