The 13 new professions released by China in 2019 will face talent shortage in the next five years, according to a recent report. Among them, the talent gap for artificial intelligence technicians is projected to be over 10 million by 2025.

An agricultural drone sprays fertilizer on a wheat field in Daliuzhuang village, Shandong province. (JI ZHE / CHINA DAILY)

Three departments, including the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, jointly released 13 new occupations in 2019, and subsequently released an analysis report on the current employment situation of each occupation to forecast the future market demand of new occupations.

According to the estimation, the current shortage of artificial intelligence technicians in China is over 5 million, with a severely disproportionate ratio of 1:10 in supply and demand. If the relevant training is not strengthened, the talent gap will exceed 10 million by 2025.

In the next five years, while the talent gap for technicians in the Internet of things (IoT) will exceed 16 million, the gap for technicians in cloud computing will exceed 1.5 million.

For talents in big data industry, the demand is expected to reach 2.1 million in 2020, maintaining a growth rate of 30-40 percent before 2025, with a total demand of about 20 million.

According to the report, the projection for talents needed in the next five years are as follows: IoT debugging personnel 5 million people, e-sports specialist 2 million people, agricultural manager 1.5 million people, building information modelling technicians 1.3 million people, industrial robot operators 1.25 million people, industrial robotics technician 1.25 million people, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) pilot 1 million people.