China sees busy recruitment season in March and April

A busy recruitment season kicked off in the third and fourth month of the year, known as "Golden March" and "Silver April", respectively, among Chinese jobseekers. Industrial transformation and upgrading is reshaping the job market while a series of measures have been taken to stabilize employment, China News Service reported on Saturday.

Tech-giants such as Huawei, ByteDance, Unitree and Alibaba have large demands for AI talents, opening positions for algorithm engineer, AI product manager, and artificial intelligence-generated content (AIGC) planner.

AI engineer was seen as one of the most popular positions in the job market in the first week of this year's spring recruitment season, with average salary of 21,319 yuan ($2,959) a month, according to the recruitment portal Zhaopin. In terms of sub-positions, robot motion control algorithm engineer earned the most, with wages of 26,231 yuan per month. The following most-earning positions were navigation algorithm engineer and deep learning engineer, with salary of 24,564 yuan and 24,417 yuan per month, respectively.

On the other hand, with automation and intelligent transformation in the traditional industrial manufacturing sector, the need for high-end manufacturing talent is also growing significantly.

The demand for mechanical engineer and automation engineer in industrial automation increased 40 percent and 10 percent year-on-year, respectively, in the first quarter of this year, Zhaopin's data showed.

The surveyed urban unemployment rate on average in China stood at 5.2 percent in the first four months of 2025, down 0.2 percentage points from the same period last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Some Chinese cities, including Beijing, Haikou, and Yangzhou, have provided free accommodation for graduates seeking jobs as one of the new measures to stabilize the job market during the spring recruiting season.

As a public welfare service program designed to address housing needs for young jobseekers, "Youth Hostel" has now expanded to 200 cities across China, with over 2,600 facilities in operation.