China’s graduates set for another difficult year as job market heats up, firms ‘never want candidates with no experience’
- 11.58 million new university graduates are set to join China’s job market this summer, with the unemployment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds at over 18 per cent
- Employment offers, though, are also becoming harder to come by as the economic boost from China’s reopening slows
Even for a small online gaming company based in Beijing, interested graduates might still have to beat off competition from over 50 other applicants to secure a job, highlighting another difficult period ahead for China’s job market, with a record number of college students soon to be fighting for a dwindling number of opportunities.
China’s job market is already awash with unsuccessful jobseekers who finished college during the coronavirus pandemic, but they will be joined by 11.58 million new university graduates this summer – some 820,000 more than last year.
Employment offers are also becoming harder to come by as the economic boost from China’s reopening also slows.
Terry Yin, a game designer at a small Beijing-based company, said his team are hiring just one new graduate with a mathematics background this year – down significantly on previous years – but still received around 20 applications.
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Xu Beibei, an artist at another Beijing-based online gaming company, said more than 200 new graduates applied for up to four job openings this year.
During last autumn’s hiring season, around 45 per cent of recent graduates received no job offers, while 3 per cent received more than seven offers, according to a survey published by Moka, an online human resources services provider.
Securities firms are seen as the one of the most desirable employers for graduates, but they want more experienced candidates to fill roles, according to staff from two separate securities firms, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.
[Companies] almost never want candidates with little to no experience
“[Companies] almost never want candidates with little to no experience,” said Jia Binli, who graduated last summer and has been unsuccessful in finding a job.
The overall urban surveyed unemployment rate stood at 5.6 per cent in February, up slightly from 5.5 per cent a month earlier.
Vocational graduates – students who have studied a particular skill or trade including welding and plumbing – have less trouble finding employment, with 95 per cent finding work after their graduation.
But manufacturers across the country are still struggling to hire skilled engineers and blue collar workers, reflecting the mismatch between the jobs young people are looking for and the jobs that are in demand.
Beijing has set a relatively ambitious job-creation target for this year of around 12 million, having created 12.06 million jobs last year.
Analysts said the surge in the official non-manufacturing PMI largely reflected a jump in in-person activity following the lifting of coronavirus restrictions and waning infections.
Under the impact of the pandemic and the gradual decline in new labour supply, many companies will adjust their expectations and replace manpower with more machines in the future
Even as the economy, especially the service sectors, has gradually recovered, the rising urban unemployment reflects a series of structural changes in China’s job market, according to a report published on Monday by the Institute of Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
“The rising unemployment … indicates the mismatch between the expansion of on-demand service, as well as the manufacturing sectors, and the kind of jobs wanted by young people, especially those highly educated,” the report said.
As more than half of the new jobseekers are highly educated, the new roles created as the service industries recover and the increase in new infrastructure investments will not be able to solve the “structural unemployment,” and the nation should focus on industrial upgrades of the service sectors, the report added.
“Under the impact of the pandemic and the gradual decline in new labour supply, many companies will adjust their expectations and replace manpower with more machines in the future. Therefore, long-term employment stability is also an important research topic,” the report added.
