China jobs: graduates face ‘sluggish prospects’ and US$3,000 a year or a helping hand to US$40,000 plus bonuses
- A record 11.58 million university students will graduate in China this year, adding to a highly competitive job market that has seen youth unemployment hit new heights
- Students from non-elite universities are faced with added pressures as graduates from well-known institutions receive more help and higher salaries
When Beijing announced the end of its coronavirus control measures at the end of last year, 22-year old university student He Yu, along with her fellow medical testing majors, suddenly faced “collective unemployment”.
“When the nucleic acid test was cancelled, our job opportunities were cancelled along with it,” said He, who graduated from an non-elite medical school in central China’s Henan province last month.
Due to China’s strict zero-Covid policy over the past three years, huge volumes of testing had left He’s major in high demand.
But now only three of the 46 students in her class have found jobs that pay around 2,000 yuan (US$279) per month, which is less than half of the average monthly salary for a fresh graduate in China.
We felt hopeless at first, but now we have basically accepted the sluggish job prospects fact now
“We felt hopeless at first, but now we have basically accepted the sluggish job prospects fact now,” said He, who is now applying for a master’s degree programme.
The world’s second-largest economy reported that 20.8 per cent of its young people aged 16 to 24 were without a job in May – the highest youth unemployment rate since the figures were first compiled.
Graduates from elite institutions can also be expected to be paid less even if they are holding a qualification that is in high demand, although the good reputation and resources of their universities are seen to offer better prospects and protection against unemployment.
Zhao Dingxin, 24, will graduate from a leading elite university in Shanghai, and will head to Beijing to work in private equity.
Enrolled in the school’s nationally renowned finance programme, she chose a job with a guaranteed base starting salary of 300,000 yuan (US$41,500) per year.
“If the market conditions get better, together with bonuses, my predicted annual salary could be up to 500,000 yuan,” Zhao said.
“The pandemic has certainly dampened salary expectations, in the past the vast majority expected an annual base salary of 300,000 yuan, now it’s down to 200,000 yuan.”
However, her expected income, which has still been reduced by a third, still exceeds the national average annual income of 36,883 yuan (US$5,098) reported by the country’s statistics department in January.
Zhao was provided with instant market information and her school designed quantitative models to assess the job market.
“We can use these indicators to change our job-hunting strategies in real-time, and the teachers always give us one-on-one employment coaching at the same time,” she said.
Benefiting from the solid reputation of elite universities and timely job market information, plus the better internship opportunities in first-tier cities, Zhao and her classmates have all found relatively well-paying jobs.
In our final year, the school only gave us one career pep rally and in fact we didn’t get any substantial help
But for students graduating from less popular colleges in smaller cities and with qualifications that are not in demand, they may increasingly find it hard to find a job.
“In our final year, the school only gave us one career pep rally and in fact we didn’t get any substantial help,” said 23-year-old Gu Yu, who will graduate from a private college in Zhengzhou, Henan province.
Unlike in the United States, where elite universities tend to be privately-run, key universities in China are basically government funded, while private institutions have a relatively low reputation among employers.
Weak teaching resources, a lack of government funding and insufficient job information among China’s private universities make graduates even more vulnerable in the job market.
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“The pep rally looked to us more like a meeting to urge us to hurry up and submit our employment certificates than giving us actual help to get a job,” added e-commerce major Gu, referring to a contract signed between the student, the university and the new employer, which guarantees their first job.
Gu is planning to head to a first-tier city in search of more opportunities, even if the pay is less attractive.
“Companies on job boards claim they pay around 7,000 to 13,000 yuan a month, but after the interview, I realised it was just a base salary of around 3,000 yuan,” Gu said.
“And this is what we are offered from one of the country’s first-tier cities of Guangzhou.”
The coronavirus may be one of the main excess factors affecting the growth in payroll
The average monthly income of graduate students in China last year was 5,990 yuan (US$828), an increase of 3 per cent from 2021, according to the Blue Book of Employment published last month by Mycos.
Data provided by the digital advisory platform for Chinese universities showed that fresh graduates have seen a significant drop in income growth since the start of the pandemic.
Four years before the outbreak, the average increase in starting salaries for graduates was 8 per cent, with this figure shrinking by half since 2020, according to the report.
“The coronavirus may be one of the main excess factors affecting the growth in payroll,” the report added.
The most obvious result is the structural paradox of elite school graduates having multiple offers to choose from, but students from ordinary institutions who may not have offers
The Blue Book data showed that young people graduating from elite institutions in 2019 earned on average 1.2 times the monthly salary of students from non-elite universities after being employed for three years. The salary growth rate for elite graduates after three years only rose by 68 per cent due to the pandemic, less than half the growth rate for graduates in 2017, the report showed.
Graduates from non-elite universities also saw their salary growth after three years decrease from 121 per cent to 66 per cent during the same period, the report said.
“Elite universities have certain advantages in resource integration, particularly in utilising alumni resources, providing career guidance services and integrating employment information,” said Mao Yufei, an associate researcher at the China Institute for Employment Research.
“The most obvious result is the structural paradox of elite school graduates having multiple offers to choose from, but students from ordinary institutions who may not have offers.”
Companies during an economic downturn tend to be more stringent in their talent selection to reduce recruitment costs, which makes it more difficult for non-elite university graduates to find jobs, Mao added.
According to Mao, non-elite universities should utilise online platforms to integrate employment information to provide students with market data and skills, thereby alleviating employment pressure for their graduates.
Despite Beijing having abandoned its strict virus policy, small- and medium-sized private enterprises (SMEs) are facing prolonged uncertainties and sluggish market prospects and are becoming afraid to recruit on a large scale.
The proportion of fresh undergraduates employed by SMEs with less than 300 employees fell by 10 per cent last year compared to five years ago, according to the Blue Book.
Amid the country’s real estate downturn, the number of fresh graduates employed in SMEs in the construction industry fell by 30 per cent compared to five years ago, the report added.
