Chen Wanyang, commentator of China Industrial Network

Recently, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and other nine departments released the Action Plan for Accelerating Digital Talent Cultivation to Support the Development of the Digital Economy (2024-2026) (hereinafter referred to as the Action Plan), which aims to play the fundamental role of digital talent in supporting the digital economy and empower high-quality development.

In recent years, the speed of digital economy development, the scope of radiation and the degree of influence are unprecedented. In daily life, AI digital people broadcast goods, make online appointments for doctors' cloud consultation, and learn online courses... It can be said that many scenes built by digital technology have been integrated into all aspects of people's life. From the data, by the end of 2022, the scale of China's digital economy has reached 50.2 trillion yuan, accounting for 41.5% of GDP. The supporting role of digital economy for economic and social development is increasingly prominent.

The development of digital economy needs the continuous drive of digital talents. In recent years, China has made remarkable achievements in the construction of digital talent team, but still faces problems such as the mismatch between the scale, quality and structure of digital talent and the development needs of digital economy industry, and insufficient innovation ability in key core areas. Data shows that the current digital talent gap in China is 25 million to 30 million, and it is still expanding. How to speed up the supply and cultivation of digital talents is one of the important challenges facing the digital era.

The release of the Action Plan was timely, fully demonstrating China's determination to increase the effective supply of digital talents, and providing direction guidance for strengthening the talent "base" of the digital economy. The six key tasks deployed in the Action Plan, including the implementation of the digital technology engineer training project, closely follow the needs of digital industrialization and industrial digital development, focus on big data, artificial intelligence, intelligent manufacturing and other related fields, formulate and promulgate national professional standards, promote learning through competition and other specific measures, and build a talent pool in many ways. At the same time, the Action Plan launched six measures from the policy guarantee level to continuously optimize the talent element structure and development environment, and create a good environment for digital talent growth with practical and effective policy support.

It is worth noting that the contents of the Action Plan, such as promoting digital skills upgrading action and holding digital vocational and technical skills competitions, are highly consistent with the current work deployment of trade unions. Last year, the All China Federation of Trade Unions held for the first time a skills contest in the field of digital economy - the National Skills Contest for Employees in Digital Application Technology, to create a digital technology skills arena for the vast number of skilled workers; This year, the All China Federation of Trade Unions issued the "Digital Skills Improvement Program for Women Workers" to strengthen the training of knowledge-based, skilled and innovative women workers in the digital era; Local trade unions actively promote the integration of digital projects into vocational skills competitions, select "digital craftsmen" and "smart craftsmen", organize model craftsmen to tell stories about digital technology empowering digital craftsmen on campus... These works and actions have improved the digital thinking, digital skills and digital literacy of workers, and also injected vitality into the development of the digital economy.

Looking forward to the future, it is expected that trade unions at all levels will continue to make efforts in using online platforms to strengthen digital skills training, make digital skills competitions bigger and stronger, jointly do a good job in digital talent cultivation, incubate more "digital craftsmen", and contribute to the "industrial" force to build a high-level digital talent team with a large scale, excellent quality, optimized structure, and reasonable distribution.