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> With a 70% drop in illustrator jobs in China over the past year – initially triggered by economic slowdown and regulatory pressures, then accelerated by the proliferation of AI tools

I think we would need a firmer accounting of what percent of the decline is due to economic slowdown vs AI

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Given that many statistics people throw around are pure bullshit, I'd be satisfied with them just revealing a source of this stat.

Source for this is the Run of World article linked in the document. Their China journalist spoke with recruiters who work on video game illustrator roles and gave background info on the trend and decrease.

I'd like to think this is similar to how Silicon Valley recruiters (the good ones, at least) have a strong pulse on the market and can share trends well in advance of them making it into any mainstream publications like WSJ or NYTimes.

Given the slow down in tech hiring, how would that slow down in illustrator hiring be compared to slowdowns in dev hiring? Interest rates going up put a damper on tech hiring in the states, and China could be going through something similar?

Ok, so this is as I suspected - it's not "70% drop in illustrator jobs", but merely 70% drop of new open positions.

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