China Hires AI to Restore Five-Year Plan's Missing Jobs Number; AI Cannot Produce Number

BEIJING — China's Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, after releasing the 15th Five-Year Plan without an employment target for the first time since the 1990s — citing artificial intelligence's unpredictable effect on a 700-million-person workforce — announced this week it has contracted a domestic AI system to supply the missing figure.

The system, developed by a state-affiliated research institute, has declined to provide a specific number.

"The model has issued a probabilistic projection indicating substantial employment creation across a wide range of outcomes commensurate with national development goals," said a ministry spokesperson, reading from a prepared statement. "This is consistent with what the plan already says."

The 2026-2030 blueprint, the first medium-term plan in at least thirty years to omit a headline jobs figure, cited the unknowable effects of artificial intelligence on employment as the reason for the gap. Officials described the contracted AI as a "technical complement" to the plan's existing qualitative language, which already pledges a "considerable scale" of new urban positions.

Asked whether "considerable" represented an improvement over the AI's output, the spokesperson said the ministry considered them equivalent.

The AI's second projection, delivered after planners asked it to recalculate, was: "Significant."

"We are exploring whether the model can produce an integer," the spokesperson said. "We remain optimistic."

China's planning commission confirmed it has not set a target for when the AI will provide a target.

"This is an evolving situation," the spokesperson said, "and projecting a timeline would require data we do not have."