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Эволюция спроса на ИИ‑навыки на российском рынке труда
The rapid proliferation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping labor markets globally, yet robust evidence on its impact remains scarce for non-Western economies, particularly following the mass adoption of generative AI and large language models. While existing literature documents a rising demand for AI skills in developed countries, comprehensive studies that analyze skill dynamics and wage premiums across industries in emerging markets during this new technological wave are largely absent. This paper addresses this gap by providing the first granular analysis of the evolution of demand for AI skills in the Russian labor market from 2021 to 2025. Leveraging a unique dataset of over 700,000 online job postings, we employ natural language processing and empirical modeling to conduct the diffusion of AI skills and their associated wage returns. Our findings reveal two key trends. While AI skills remain niche in less than 3% of job postings, the demand shows a significant upward trend, concentrated in high-tech industries. Also, we document a sharp decline in the wage “over-premium” for AI skills, from 31.8% in 2022 to 11.8% in 2025, suggesting a market stabilization. Crucially, we find no evidence of labor substitution effect; instead, our results point to a strong complementarity effect, where AI skills augment the value of analytical and managerial competencies, especially in non-IT occupations. This study contributes to literature by providing novel evidence from a major emerging economy during the generative AI boom and challenges the job polarization narrative, suggesting a dominant scenario of “soft complementarity” between AI and human labor.