The December 2008 Job Fair in Beijing saw some 40,000 people on a rather panicky job search, which, experts say, is due to China’s emphasis on higher education coupled with the global economic crisis that has led to soaring unemployment figures as high as 27%.
China set up a large network of new colleges earlier in the decade to create a workforce to meet the technical demands of the 21st century, and as a result, some 6 million green grads are on an anxious peddling of resumés. Students from Guangdong Province, China’s wealthiest region, are so desperate for work they’re applying for jobs as nannies and still getting rejected.
There’s “a mismatch between expectations and realities, exacerbated by the current economic slowdown,” says Thomas Rawski, a China expert at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. “It really is a clash of preferences.”
The percentage of college-going youngsters rose from three in the ’80s to 20 last year. But rise in the number of educated youth doesn’t necessarily mean jobs — about 750,000 students took the civil service exam, and only two percent could expect placements.
According to a senior from Peking University, a 5,000 yuan ($735) a month would have been acceptable in Beijing before the financial crunch, but lately, grads are settling for jobs with monthly salaries between 1,700 yuan ($250) and 3,000 yuan ($440).
