Vigorously promote the expansion and quality improvement of "digital talents"

　　 Core point: Qiao Ruiqing, columnist of China Economic Network, believes that the demand of society for digital talents is not only a process of quantitative growth, but also a process of qualitative improvement. All parties should make joint efforts to seize the opportunities of the times and consolidate the talent "base" of the digital economy, which will surely promote the economic and social development to a new level.

In recent years, with the deepening of a new round of scientific and technological revolution and digital transformation, digital talent has become a scarce resource for all walks of life. This trend not only brings unprecedented development opportunities for digital talents themselves, but also opens a new market space for talent service institutions.

According to the data of a recruitment platform, AIGC (generative artificial intelligence) related jobs grew 321.70% year on year in the first quarter, showing a sharp growth trend. At the same time, the number of people delivering in this field increased by 946.84% year on year, and the salaries of natural language processing experts, image algorithm engineers and architects ranked the top three. It should be noted that digital talents have become "hot cakes", which also highlights the good momentum of China's economic transformation and upgrading.

In 2022, the scale of China's digital economy will reach 50.2 trillion yuan, ranking second in the world. The "two-way rush" of the digital economy and the real economy has constantly spawned new industries, new formats and new models, injecting surging new vitality and new momentum into economic and social development. In China Optics Valley in Wuhan, five national large-scale scientific devices and six Hubei laboratories have been built, and the overall scale of optoelectronic information industry has exceeded 500 billion yuan; In the China Vision Valley in Hangzhou, "black technology" in industrial vision, visual intelligence, intelligent medical care, the metauniverse and other fields has emerged frequently

In the face of the booming digital economy, some people worry that "digital substitution" will have an impact on jobs in some industries. However, in the long run, the development of the digital economy has made some jobs a "history", while also creating new jobs. These new jobs have the characteristics of knowledge intensive, technology intensive and creative intensive, with higher production efficiency, more innovative labor and greater added value. If the industrial driving role of the digital economy is taken into account, more jobs will be created indirectly.

The employment opportunities created by the digital economy have emerged at the industrial level. The Industrial Digital Talent Research and Development Report (2023) pointed out that the current digital talent gap in China is 25 million to 30 million, and the gap is still expanding. It can be said that the development of digital economy is facing a talent bottleneck. In the face of such a huge talent gap, the most important thing at present is to comply with the development trend of the digital economy, closely follow the demand for digital talents, do everything possible to improve the digital literacy of workers, and vigorously increase the supply of digital talents, so as to ease the contradiction between supply and demand of digital talents.

On the one hand, we should improve the ability of colleges and universities to cultivate digital talents. For example, encourage and support universities to favor digital talents in terms of specialty setting, teacher training, enrollment scale, etc. At the same time, it is necessary to integrate the latest practice of industry development into teaching content and practical training projects, constantly increase the proportion of practical courses, and promote the comprehensive connection between education mode, content and market demand. On the other hand, enterprises should play a major role in digital talent training. Enterprise is the entity of digital economy development, and also the main body of cultivating digital talents. Under the "leadership" of relevant departments, we can systematically strengthen the training of practical skills of digital economy through co building and co managing the digital economy industry college and providing practical training bases, and cooperate with colleges and universities to cultivate professionals with practical operation skills, etc. In short, only when the government, universities and enterprises form a joint force can the whole chain ecosystem from digital talent training to training to incentive be established.

At present, the digital economy is expanding and meeting people's higher level needs for a better life. The continuous promotion of the application of digital technology has become a new driving force for consumption upgrading and constantly created a better digital life. The demand of society for digital talents is not only a quantitative growth process, but also a qualitative improvement process. All parties should make joint efforts to seize the opportunities of the times and consolidate the talent "base" of the digital economy, which will surely promote the economic and social development to a new level. (Qiao Ruiqing, columnist of China Economic Network)