At this year’s commencement ceremony for the Chongqing Metropolitan College of Science and Technology in southwest China, the graduating class did not receive the usual lofty message to pursue their dreams. Instead, they were faced with a harsh dose of reality.
“You shouldn’t aim too high or be picky about work,” said Huang Zongming, the college’s president, among more than 9,000 graduates in June. “Opportunities are fleeting.”
A record number of Chinese college graduates are entering the job market, exacerbating the already bleak job outlook for the country’s youth. Consolidation deepens one of the most intractable issues keeping the world’s second-largest economy from regaining vitality.
China’s unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds in urban areas hit a record 21.3 percent in June. The numbers for July are expected to be even higher as the next wave of graduates officially transitions from students to job seekers.
Government policymakers struggling to address the problem are now counting on colleges to do more to find jobs for graduates. School administrators’ job performance is already tied to the percentage of their students who find employment after graduation. Now top school officials are encouraged to visit companies to unearth opportunities. In some cases, the scrutiny is so intense that students make job offers to appease school officials.
Over the past three decades, as China’s economy has grown rapidly, more people have attended college, seeing it as a path to promising careers. The number of students enrolling in colleges and universities will increase to 10.1 million in 2022 from 754,000 in 1992, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
This year’s estimated graduating class of 11.6 million students is expected to be the largest ever, and future classes are expected to be even larger. At the same time, the economy is not growing as it used to.
The problem of youth unemployment may not abate for a decade, with a potentially greater impact on the country’s leadership, said a report in June from the China Macroeconomy Forum, a think tank with Renmin University of China.
“If it is not managed properly, it will cause other social problems beyond the economy, and it may even ignite political problems,” the report said.
China’s youth unemployment rate has doubled in the past four years, a period of economic volatility brought on by Beijing’s “zero Covid” measures that have left companies wary of acquisition.
In addition, government crackdowns and tighter oversight have decimated once-vibrant industries such as online education, technology and real estate — fields that young people have flocked to for jobs.
As of 2020, Alibaba, one of China’s largest technology companies, has been the target of a government investigation. Last year, the company cut its number of employees by about 11,700, or about 5 percent of its workforce, according to a report issued by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a body working under the State Council of China.
And as more young people complete higher education, there’s been a mismatch between the jobs they want versus what’s available. China’s economy has not created enough of the high-paying white-collar jobs that many college graduates seek, intensifying competition for the most attractive roles.
After economic growth slowed sharply in the second quarter, Beijing issued a 31-point package of policy initiatives and support measures in July that encourage private companies to add jobs.
In a May report on youth unemployment in China, Goldman Sachs said young people are especially vulnerable to losing their jobs or not getting hired in an economic downturn because they have less work experience.
In June, China’s Ministry of Education schools and local officials were told to help graduates find jobs “with a sense of duty and urgency,” citing the concern of the Communist Party and top government leaders.
The ministry also told Communist Party officials and school administrators what they should do visit companies to find job vacancies for students in majors with low employment rates. In Hunan Province, the department of education recently issued a notice which requires schools to submit an explanation if more than 20 percent of graduates find part-time or freelance work instead of a full-time job. Sichuan Province said its colleges canceling majors will be considered with a low employment rate for two consecutive years.
More and more, the message being passed on to young people is that they should not be too picky about choosing a job and that enduring tough times builds character. Xi Jinping, the country’s top leader, said that young people should strive to work in difficult and remote areas and learn “eat bitterness,” a Chinese expression meaning to endure hardship. But even becoming an entry-level civil servant is more difficult these days, with more people taking the entrance exam than there are jobs available.
College administrators feel pressure to fulfill work mandates from the government.
“The superiors pressure the schools, and the schools only pressure the staff,” said Emma Zhu, a career counselor at a college in Zhejiang Province.
Stella Xu, who works as a career counselor at a college in Hubei Province, said her boss gave the counselors job rate rankings and asked them to provide updates on job placements. at each monthly meeting.
“You put invisible pressure on yourself,” says Ms. Xu, who said he has a “pretty good” employment rate after advising more than 250 graduates this year. “It will be bad if you are too far away from others.”
said Ms. Xu said that when he visited companies, he tried to persuade employers to hire more graduates than they were looking for. He said he encouraged his students to get job offers quickly and told them they should turn in the job offer agreements to the school on graduation day.
“I am very uneasy every day about why some students are not working,” he said.
As the pressure campaign on colleges intensified, students and administrators turned to extreme measures.
For $17 on Taobao, a Chinese e-commerce site, a vendor sells fictitious job offers from a manufacturing firm emblazoned with the company’s seal and registration number. Along with providing the document, the vendor will also respond to confirmation calls from the school or a local department of education.
Jessamine Wang, 23, who graduated in financial management from a university in Chengdu, in southwest China, decided to take the civil service exam after unsuccessfully applying for more than 100 jobs. His career counselor urged him to give a fake job offer from a company anyway, and threatened to undermine his government job prospects if he didn’t. said Ms. Wang refused.
Lucia Xu, 22, gave her career counselor a fake job offer at a construction company where a family friend worked. She plans to take graduate school exams this winter and won’t be looking for a job while she studies for the exams.
“When you don’t sign one, they will hassle you even more. The closer they get to graduation, the more they insist,” Ms. Xu said.
