Digital Economy and Talent Development Report in China's Greater Bay Area

 

LinkedIn’s Economic Graph is a digital representation of the global economy based on data generated from over 610 million members, 50 thousand skills, 30 million companies, over 20 million open jobs, and 90 thousand schools. Through mapping every member, company, job, and school, we’re able to spot trends like cross-region talent migration, in-demand jobs and skill gaps. By partnering and sharing these insights with governments and organizations around the world, LinkedIn helps them better connect people to economic opportunities.

With more than 45 million members in China, we have unique insights into some of the dynamics of China’s digital talent landscape. That’s why we teamed up with Tsinghua University to launch the Digital Economy and Talent Development Report in China’s Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Key findings:

1. Overall, talents are more concentrated in the east than the west of the Greater Bay Area, if we use the Pearl River as the demarcation. Top talents (who have a bachelor’s degree and above) and digital talents are mainly found in Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Guangzhou, with Shenzhen as the top hub.

2. Talents in the Greater Bay Area have diverse educational backgrounds. Over 25% have overseas learning experience and more than 30% have master’s degrees and above. When it comes to fields of study, economic management majors such as business administration, economics, and finance rank among the top. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) majors such as computer science are also in the lead.

3. Compared with other Chinese cities as hubs of digital economy, such as Beijing and Wuhan, cities in the Greater Bay Area are much more attractive to digital talents, while the level of attraction is similar to Shanghai and Chengdu but lags far behind Hangzhou in this aspect.

4. The Greater Bay Area has an overall net inflow of top talents and digital talents. Shenzhen is the most attractive city to the talents. The talents, especially digital talents, gravitate towards Shenzhen, underlying its position as the digital economy hub in the Greater Bay Area.

5. Hong Kong’s talent exchange with cities within the Greater Bay Area lags far behind Shenzhen and Guangzhou; Macao stays even further behind. There is more room for the two Special Administrative Regions (SARs) to strengthen talent exchange with mainland cities.

6. The Greater Bay Area has a strong talent pool. Most R&D talents are in the science and technology innovation corporations and most digital talents are in the software and hardware industries. However, there are relatively smaller numbers of university-based researchers and entrepreneurs, and the international connections for local talents also need to be improved.

7. Talents in the Greater Bay Area are younger in comparison with San Francisco and Sydney but not inexperienced. They have great capacity and potential for development.