AI skills demand in the Russian labor market

The rapid proliferation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping labor markets globally, yet robust evidence on its impact remains scarce for nonWestern economies, particularly following the mass adoption of generative AI and large language models. This paper provides 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 quantify the diffusion of AI skills and their associated wage returns. While AI skills remain niche in less than 3% of job postings, the demand shows a significant upward trend especially 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. We find no evidence of a 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 the 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.