Fewer Hong Kong youngsters with degrees land middle-class jobs, while more work as clerks

Fewer young people found middle-class jobs compared with a decade earlier while the number of clerks holding degrees increased, a study has found.

But the Chinese University researchers said it was inappropriate to attribute this trend to the radicalisation of young people as they believed that social mobility did not affect political outlook.

Only 73.4 per cent of university graduates managed to secure a middle-class position - manager, administrator, professional and associate professional - in 2011, compared with 82.5 per cent in 2001, according to the study, which was published in the journal of a semi-official mainland think tank.

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Those who completed only Form Six and sub-degree courses found life even harder - 32.5 per cent landed middle-class jobs, a drop of 14.2 percentage points from a decade ago.

In contrast, an increasing number of degree holders - from 11 per cent to 18.2 per cent - worked as office clerks, an occupation that usually requires only secondary education level. Almost three in five youngsters who had completed Form Six or sub-degree level worked as clerks or services and sales workers.

"[The findings] had reflected that the opportunity for young people taking up middle-class postings had dropped whereas their elevated level of education level had failed to bring them any advantage in the labour market," wrote the researchers, Dr Stephen Chiu Wing-kai and Dr Joanne Ip Chung-yan, of the university's Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies.

The article came out just a week after a Beijing-friendly policy group, New Forum, found that the median monthly income of fresh college graduates had plunged by almost 20 per cent in two decades.