Ms Yang, a 31-year-old living in Shanghai, says she has received almost no responses from the more than 100 firms to which she has applied since last month. With a master’s degree in social science, she is seeking work in the internet industry.

02:14

Chinese reluctant to have children as China reports first population fall in 61 years

Chinese reluctant to have children as China reports first population fall in 61 years

Declining to give her full name out of fear that it could further harm her ability to find a job, Yang said a number of companies are explicitly requiring candidates to be under the age of 30, and for some that number has dropped to 27.

This is roughly the age of the youngest millennials – meaning that, in the next year or two, the elder members of Generation Z could find that they’re already aged out of some jobs in China.

Yang also pointed out that many companies require both a postgraduate degree and at least three years of work experience, making it exceedingly difficult for someone to graduate young enough to gain the requisite experience before they are considered too old for jobs.

“This means that I would have had to work in my relevant industry soon after graduation, otherwise I could lose the entry ticket for my career,” she lamented. “I’m concerned that the trial-and-error costs in job-hunting will rise with age.

“I was already 27 when I graduated and have worked for only three years. If anything goes wrong, I may forever lose the chance to find my career path, with additional age limits.”

In the traditional context of Chinese culture, women are often defined as family caregivers. Thus, those already over the age of 30 may be asked during job interviews how they would strike a balance between work and family – questions that Yang said she believes are asked less of male applicants.

“It has been a widely held belief that women after 30 would return to families, so a decision to change jobs has to be handled carefully,” she said.

Su Zhe, 28, has been a headhunter in Shanghai for 3.5 years. He said the rising prevalence of ageism is a clear direction that companies are choosing to embrace in times of economic uncertainties.

“After three years of the pandemic, many firms are at risk of shutting down,” Su said. “Companies are not charities; they have to think about their own survival first.”

He explained that many firms prefer young and energetic graduates because they’re both cheaper to employ and they have a longer career lifespan ahead of them compared with older job candidates who expect higher pay, tend to be less physically active and are more inclined to strive for a work-life balance and to request parental leave upon having children.

According to a report released in June by Chinese human resources and job search provider 51job.com, the number of jobs requiring more than 10 years of experience accounted for only 10.5 per cent of all postings on the website, while the number of jobs requiring “1-3 years” or “3-5 years” accounted for more than 60 per cent.

Among surveyed employees over the age of 35, more than 60 per cent were in non-managerial positions, and more than 70 per cent said their careers had stagnated in terms of opportunities for promotion before turning 35. Those who were promoted after turning 35 were mostly concentrated in high-end industries including artificial intelligence, IT, chips and semiconductors, the report found.

“Young people retain lower wages due to their lack of experience, and for some positions with high turnover, companies can recruit suitable young employees by paying lower salaries,” said Mao Yufei, an associate researcher at the China Institute for Employment Research.

“Youth are seen as more creative, most of them have not yet started a family, and they may be more willing to adapt to a certain amount of intense, fast-paced work out of a desire to pursue a career.”

02:30

Millions of China’s fresh graduates enter bleak job market

Millions of China’s fresh graduates enter bleak job market

However, as China recovers from its pandemic-induced downturn, Mao said that age discrimination in employment could somewhat abate, with the market opening up more jobs to experienced workers over 30. And Mao expects the service sector and some manufacturing industries to take the lead in this recovery.

The government also needs to introduce more robust employment policies, increase the ability of older jobseekers to access job information, regulate the hiring requirements of companies in the labour market, and leverage the ability of the platform economy to absorb workers, Mao said.

“We need to strengthen labour-law awareness and encourage jobseekers to defend their employment rights through legal measures when they encounter ageism,” Mao added.

Age discrimination is illegal in many countries, but not in China, which is struggling to cope with a rapidly ageing population and shrinking workforce.

China vows new graduate support as youth unemployment woes linger

The demographic changes have raised the cost of China’s labour market, according to an annual report on employment development, released in November by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

“There is a clear preference for younger employees, and some companies even set an unreasonable recruitment threshold of 35 years old,” the report said, noting that such factors will serve to “further aggravate the structural contradiction between supply and demand in the labour market”.

State media has also weighed in, urging firms to address the “unscientific and unreasonable” restrictions on job recruitment.

“Such restrictions have been widely adopted in some sectors and regions,” according to an op-ed piece on Thursday in the Worker’s Daily, which is backed by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions. “They have exacerbated the concerns of jobseekers; breached the red line of the law and the bottom line of ethics; and brought chaos to the job market.

“These have to be corrected.”