AI Pilot Zones and Labor Market Demand: Evidence from China

Whether artificial intelligence policy can expand labor demand, and how the additional demand is distributed across different types of jobs, is an important question in evaluating the economic consequences of technological development. This paper matches city-level annual online job posting data and city statistical yearbook data with policy information on the National New-Generation Artificial Intelligence Pilot Zones, and employs a difference-in-differences model to examine the labor market effects of pilot zone construction. The results show that the policy significantly increases overall local hiring demand. The growth in recruitment covers workers at different levels of education, skills, and experience, and is reflected in high-skill, low-technology, technology- and knowledge-intensive, and labor-intensive positions. At the same time, the posted wage gap between high-skill and low-skill positions widens. These findings indicate that the construction of AI pilot zones may bring about both a multi-tiered expansion of job demand and a divergence in skill-based wages, providing empirical evidence for coordinating technological development, worker skill upgrading, and employment policy.