As the digital transformation of the manufacturing industry advances, "unmanned workshops" and "lights-out factories" are rapidly increasing. "Machine substitution of labor" has brought improvements in production efficiency, but has also reduced the number of workers employed by some enterprises.

People cannot help but ask: as new technologies iterate and update, to what extent will machines replace human labor, and what impact will this have on traditional industrial workers? Let us investigate in Shanghai, Anhui, Sichuan, Jiangsu and other places to seek answers from the front lines.

Where have traditional industrial workers gone?

Walking into a new materials company located in Jieshou City, Fuyang, Anhui, workers in the clean workshop are clicking on CNC panels while machines operate efficiently.

According to Hu Wei, the company's person in charge, the company has carried out digital transformation in recent years. Previously one shift required 40 people; now, with a higher degree of automation, only 32 people are needed to handle the work.

As a major absorber of employment, the butterfly effect triggered by manufacturing transformation is now emerging in the labor market.

Photo shows job seekers at the human resources market in Jinjiang District, Chengdu. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Chen Jian

On June 17, at the human resources market in Jinjiang District, Chengdu, a large screen was scrolling through enterprise recruitment information, and notice boards on both sides of the screen posted recruitment notices from enterprises.

Zhang Jun, a migrant worker from Jintang County, Chengdu, came here early in the morning to look for a job. He originally worked at an electronic component assembly factory in Guangdong. As the factory became increasingly automated and intelligent, positions like his—"requiring little skill and quick to learn"—employed fewer and fewer people, and wages also dropped. He therefore decided to return to his hometown Chengdu, where his new job is working at a catering enterprise.

In the process of manufacturing digital transformation, low-skilled workers bear the brunt of the impact. New forms of business such as food delivery and livestreaming are developing rapidly and have partially absorbed former traditional manufacturing workers.

Zhang Chenggang, director of the China New Employment Forms Research Center at Capital University of Economics and Business, said that reemployment of low-skilled workers mainly flows to fields such as catering services, express delivery and ride-hailing.

Some traditional industrial workers have also, through study and training, achieved a leap from low-skilled jobs to high-skilled positions.

In Jiangyin, Jiangsu, with the intelligent transformation of the crane used to grab molten steel slag, Zhou Qing, a crane operator in her 40s, now sits in an office in the intelligent control center and has become a master controller. From operating machine handles on site to operating a computer mouse in the office, she spent a full half year learning and adapting. "To adapt to changes, you have to learn skills faster," Zhou Qing said. Only by continuous learning can one keep up with the pace of development.

At present, China has built nearly 10,000 digital workshops and smart factories, and new technologies are giving rise to new professions and new positions.

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security** released for public notice 19 new professions, including intelligent manufacturing system operation and maintenance technicians and industrial internet operation and maintenance technicians, and also proposed adding 29 new job types such as mobile operating system application designers.

"Changes in market demand are reshaping a new pattern of employment demand," said Li Chang'an, a professor at the National Academy of Opening-up at the University of International Business and Economics. "Generally speaking, technological progress will cause unemployment in the short term, but in the long run, the 'creation effect' of employment will be greater than the 'destruction effect,' especially bringing a clear improvement in employment quality."

Demand for high-skilled, high-quality industrial workers is increasing

On an intelligent production line at an industrial base in Foshan, seven robots are completing most of the complex assembly processes.

The person directing the robots behind the scenes is electromechanical engineer Tang Zhi. With the enterprise's digital transformation, Tang Zhi's position has also "upgraded" from equipment maintenance when he first joined in 2017 to participating in the design, installation and commissioning of product welding lines, and now to leading participation in self-made intelligent final assembly production lines.

In recent years, the scale of skilled talent in China has continued to grow, and its share of all employed persons has risen to more than 26 percent. However, compared with manufacturing powerhouses such as Germany and Japan, this proportion is still markedly low. The long-term shortage of skilled talent, especially the increasingly prominent contradiction between the supply of high-skilled talent and the demand for industrial transformation and upgrading, has become more acute.

A monitoring report for the first quarter of 2024 in Tongling City, Anhui, shows that the job vacancy-to-applicant ratio for professional and technical personnel in the human resources market was 1.58, up 0.12 percentage points from the previous quarter, and demand for professional and technical talent has been on the rise for several consecutive quarters.

The survey found that some manufacturing positions are shifting from labor-intensive to knowledge-intensive, and workers' incomes are rising accordingly.

Wage levels for enterprise skilled talent released in Shanghai show that in recent years the wage level of skilled talent has grown faster, with an average annual growth rate of more than 9 percent.

"Compared with the rapid changes in industry and technology, changes in people are a gradual variable. But once stimulated, they will generate tremendous power," said Mo Rong, president of the Chinese Academy of Labor and Social Security.

Government, enterprises and universities should work together to provide labor transition services

In the face of the wave of digital transformation, the government, enterprises, universities and other parties are all making efforts to help industrial workers increase their skill reserves and enhance their employment competitiveness.

Several provinces have released catalogs of occupations in acute shortage and strengthened precise matching between talent supply and demand.

Shanghai, focusing on key industries and enterprises, has carried out forward-looking analysis and forecasting and has now formed a catalog of 100 occupations (job types) in urgent shortage and a catalog of 33 new skills training programs, including various skills needed in the field of intelligent manufacturing.

Yang Jiaying said: "The catalog plays the role of a 'baton,' attracting social training resources and forces to gather in directions of urgent shortage, while also guiding the broad masses of workers to learn and improve their skills, so that what development needs is combined with what individuals can do."

Some local governments have allocated real funding to subsidize vocational skills training.

Meishan City in Sichuan gives rewards to individual enterprises that add high-skilled talent in the year, issues Meishan Outstanding Talent Cards to chief technicians (special-grade technicians), grants vocational skill level rewards and living expense subsidies, and provides awards and subsidies to newly recognized vocational skill level evaluation institutions.

Some places use professional title evaluation to build a "strong magnetic field" that attracts and gathers digital talent.

Manufacturing enterprises are also continuously improving internal skilled talent training mechanisms.

Some enterprises, through diversified practical training bases, provide more systematic training, assessment and qualification certification, building a career advancement channel of "general worker—key position—industrial technician—engineer" for frontline employees.

More and more frontline workers are recognizing the urgency of improving professional skills.

"One must have a specialized skill." Gu Zhengdong, a migrant worker from Renshou County, Meishan City, recently participated in a vocational skills competition organized by Renshou County. He said, "Through the competition, my professional knowledge and skills have been further tested and improved."

Mo Rong said that in the face of the impact of manufacturing digital transformation on workers, the government, enterprises, universities and other parties should form a joint force, strive to build a high-quality industrial worker workforce, and provide strong human resources support for the strategy of building a manufacturing powerhouse.