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| Sara Hsu |
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| Victor Shih |
Among the most worried are university graduates. This year, nearly 7.5 million people graduated from universities in China, a 3 percent increase over last year.
“The difficulty of finding employment in 2015 is still relatively high,” said Zhang Feng, director of the career center of the Ministry of Education, according to an article on the ministry’s news site. “Both the central and local economies’ growth rates have entered the ‘new normal.’”
Victor Shih, a political economist at the University of California, San Diego, said the slowdown exacerbated worrisome trends in the job market.
“Highly paid professional jobs have been scarce for several years now,” he said, “and many young graduates have depended on their parents’ connections to obtain entry positions in the government or state-owned enterprises. The current downturn will hit graduates without strong connections or specialized skills.”
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| Sara Hsu |
Education Minister Yuan Guiren encouraged graduates to find jobs in the services and commercial agriculture sectors, especially in second and third tier cities. Xu Hongcai, assistant to the financial minister, promised tax breaks to college graduates who start their own businesses. Vice Minister of Science and Technology, Cao Jianlin, stated that Guangdong province will provide 2.5 billion RMB ($403 million) to science and technology start-ups, and that Zhejiang province will allocation 100 million RMB for these types of startups. Human Resources and Social Security Minister Yin Weimin said the government will provide business start-up subsidies to individuals on student loans.
Many college students were able to find a job in 2014, a considerable improvement from 2011, but the job market for new graduates has now become far more competitive in first and second tier cities. Age limits for hiring of graduates have made competition for jobs even more heated in some first-tier cities. About 3 percent of college graduates chose to start their own businesses in 2014, which was more than in previous years, but is still a low number.
Still, the lure of starting a new business is enticing, especially in the internet industry. E-commerce start-ups are hot right now, with electronic payment platforms quite of the moment. The success of internet giants Alibaba and JD.com, coupled with the stock market boom, has attracted new Internet start-ups to the industry. Premier Li Keqiang’s concept of “Internet plus,” linking online ventures to offline businesses in the manufacturing industry, has underscored the leadership’s interest in moving up the value chain. College graduates, particularly those with one or more years of experience, are encouraged to enter this industry.
No matter what specific jobs graduates choose, creating jobs in high-skilled sectors is essential to ensuring employment for China’s graduating students. Educated young people are loath to work in manufacturing jobs, but mismatches often exist between students’ skills and existing jobs. Academic universities do not necessarily produce graduates with technical skills. This is why some traditional universities are being converted into polytechnic schools...
Although college graduates may choose to start their own businesses, it is probably wiser to generate more high-skilled jobs in which graduates can first gain experience. The pressing need for economic restructuring will not be staved off by policies encouraging youth entrepreneurship. More substantive policies should transform the manufacturing and services sectors to bring new graduates into higher value-added positions.More in the Diplomat.
Zhang Juwei“The largest group of graduates who’ve taken up jobs that do not require a college diploma has grow to be blue-collar workers,” says Zhang, who has been studying the labor difficulties in the country for a lengthy time. “Many other graduates have entered simple service sectors like security and housekeeping.”
Disproportionate availability of jobs across industries is the prime trigger of the trend, he says. The number of students graduating from colleges multiplied from 3.3 million in 2005 to 5.59 million in 2008. The graduates typically are employed in service sectors and function at office.
Zhang says the country’s relatively backward economic structure and inferior position in the world industrial chain is the trigger of this imbalance. China’s economic growth has relied heavily on the second industry(manufacturing and construction), which accounts for about half of the total economic output, while the tertiary industry accounts for only about 40 percent, significantly lower than in most developed countries.
Besides, China is still downstream in the global industrial chain, which deprives it of creating numerous jobs. “Many job opportunities including designing, analysis and development, and marketplaceing appeal to and will need individuals with higher qualifications but they’re not properly or adequately distributed in China, for several goods produced here are designed abroad.”
Take iPhone for instance. While foreign designers and researchers function out the best way to add value to the product and attract far more customers, Chinese workers only assemble and package them. That is why college graduates might have fewer opportunities in China than abroad. Having compared Chinese and foreign college graduates, Zhang discovered that much less than 3 percent of the country’s graduates are likely to begin their own business compared with 20 percent in developed countries. That dries up a lot of job opportunities, due to the fact if one individual starts a business, he/she could provide employment to numerous other people.More in PhBeta.
