Youth Unemployment Rate for Ages 16-24 Hits Record High at 20.8%
The fact that master's students from prestigious Chinese universities and overseas master's students have been employed in dormitory management positions at regional universities has brought renewed attention to the severe employment difficulties in China.
Currently, the employment situation for Chinese youth is facing its worst phase. The youth unemployment rate for those aged 16 to 24 reached a record high of 20.8% in May. This is double the 10.1% rate recorded in 2018 over four years, with sluggish economic recovery cited as the cause. The number of university graduates this summer is expected to reach a record high of 11.58 million.
Announcement of Confirmed Recruitment for Dormitory Management Staff at Shandong University Photo by Pengpai News
As evidence of this, reports have emerged of highly educated young people in China consecutively securing management positions. According to Yonhap News and local media Pengpai News on the 1st, Shandong University recently announced that "through open recruitment, two master's students from Harbin Institute of Technology and the University of Adelaide in Australia were hired as staff members of the student dormitory management center." The management staff are responsible for political and ideological education as well as administrative tasks within the dormitories.
Shandong University limited the application qualifications to those with a master's degree or higher in the recruitment announcement. The University of Adelaide, from which one of the successful candidates graduated, is a prestigious national university in Australia established in 1874, and Harbin Institute of Technology is considered one of the top science and engineering universities in China.
When it became known that highly qualified individuals from prestigious universities were employed as dormitory management staff at a regional university, related hashtags quickly rose to the top of the real-time search rankings on China's social media platform Weibo on the 1st.
According to Yonhap News, netizens reacted by saying things like, "There was a time when overseas-educated students could choose between state-owned enterprises or large private companies, but now we can really feel the changes in the job market," and "You need to be a master's graduate from a prestigious university just to get a dormitory management job at a regional university, so where on earth can ordinary university students go?"
Earlier, on the 28th of last month (local time), Hongsheng News reported that 224 master's and doctoral students from world-renowned universities applied for a single administrative position at PetroChina, a Chinese state-owned enterprise.
Among the candidates who passed the written exam, as disclosed by Hongsheng News, were many master's and doctoral students from prestigious Chinese universities such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, as well as from world-renowned universities including the UK's Royal University, University of Manchester, University of Edinburgh, and the US Johns Hopkins University.
The company also restricted application qualifications to so-called high-spec candidates. Applicants had to hold a master's degree or higher from a university ranked in the top 30 worldwide by the UK daily The Times or within the top 10 universities in China, and have achieved a TOEFL score of 96 or higher.
Nevertheless, 470 people applied for another administrative position at PetroChina, which was recruiting only one person. For the finance and legal departments, which were recruiting two people each, 413 and 582 applicants applied respectively. These positions also required applicants to have a master's degree or higher.
This employment difficulty among Chinese youth appears to be influenced by the fact that, despite China's reopening after the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic recovery has not gained sufficient momentum. There are also forecasts that unless the economy recovers after the shift from the 'zero COVID' policy, the employment difficulties will worsen further.
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