Why China Isn’t Providing Enough Jobs for Its Young

Millions of young people in China are out of work and there are signs this could get even worse in the coming months. What's behind China's youth unemployment problem?

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[StruggleTo.EnglishFluency]

That's not a chinese problem, but a developing country problem globally wide.

[gtw]

Two things that weren’t mentioned but are important to understanding.
1 - China counts working only ONE hour per week as “employed” compared to 15 or more hours in other countries. If a similar criteria were applied in China, the youth unemployment rate would be significantly higher!
2 - China only counts urban unemployment. So encouraging young people to go to rural areas would simply remove them from the equation, whether actually employed or not. In other words, the stats can appear to improve even when no actual situational improvement occurs.

[brokelaowaiinchina]

In my experience as a foreigner in China, there's still many jobs available for young people, it's just that many of them consider these jobs unsuitable or the salary is too low for their level of education. So they'd rather wait for a better opportunity or do something that offers more freedom like a part time job.

[NotKimiRaikkonen]

Its a supply and demand issue. They told everyone to go get university degrees, but their economy is driven by low-paid manufacturing that university graduates dont want. Theres more university graduates than white collar jobs available.

[IamHandsomeu]

Thats one of the biggest problem in a country with huge population like china and india, millions of students apply for a job with a vacancy of around 5-10k seats, or sometimes even just hundreds, and because of that competition gets very high among the students and many students fail their tests, resulting in unemployment.

[wyw]

When I was living in China, there is a massive shortage of blue collar workers and skilled technicians, and a huge surplus of white collar workers. There are many opportunities available but Chinese youth and families today consider them not worth the degree to pursue.

[michaelgothenburg]

A few things missing here. 1) the unemployment figures do NOT include all rural areas. The true unemployment is likely a bit lower on a country level. 2) i have worked with rhe Chinese for 35 years, I still work with them on a daily basis. So many companies in China has headcount freeze. They dont replace laid off workers either. What does this mean? It means that so many companies don't see real improvement coming for quite some time. 3) it is normal that companies in China cut salaries for workers in bad times. Sounds normal? Well, percentage cuts in China can be extreme, I hear 30, 40, even 50%. 4) The most important one. Whatever you do, don't trust official Chinese GDP or unemployment numbers. They are always massaged. The situation is actually worse than official numbers indicate. 5) I have talked to Chinese who say that salaries for new hired have been pushed to rock bottom levels. Half of what salaries were 2 years ago, it's not enough to live on by far.
Another person posted that he was in China and said that there are jobs but the Chinese don't want them, wait for better jobs. Just want to clarify that those are the jobs where salaries offered are half of what the same job paid 2 years ago and there's no way they can live on what the make. By a big margin.

[riverraven]

An underreported problem is the countryside reforms that are pushing out older farmers and impoverishment of village collectives in order to make room for city dwellers to move out into the country. If experienced farmers are pushed away it will cause famine eventually like when Zimbabwe repossessed white farmers land and gave it to city Africans who didn't know how to farm.

[alexhan]

we need a more detailed breakdown, as most of young people between 16 to 24 would be in high school and university so of course they can't be employed.

[willz]

There are 2 caveats about unemployment data:

On the upside, if people are finally looking for work, the unemployment figure ought to be higher as you increase the numerator more than the denominator

On the downside, official data in China counts working 1 hour a week as employed

[ALWH]

The current Chinese youth generation is from the one child era, hence parents groom them very aggressively to finish college or above, so there shouldn’t be many youth in job market younger than 21. Because this is the mama body generation, they tend to avoid blue collar jobs thus fight for limited while collar positions. So, I think using 16-24 age group to calculate unemployment rate is misleading, 20-30 is more appropriate for Chinese demographics.

[Zircillius]

How is it unusual for 16-24 yr olds to be unemployed? That's called being a student, of course they're unemployed. The rates are just as high in the US

[MdaridScammwr]

If you hear about unemployed youngs, welcome to Asia.

[RazrStudio]

India has similar challenges, may b the world need new economic model

[AnnaFed]

Creating wealth and financial freedom isn't as tough as many people believe. Building wealth and remaining financially stable indefinitely is a lot easier with the appropriate information. Participating in financial programs and products is the only true approach to make a high income and remain affluent

[useru]

more business and companies is needed I guess I hope it gets better

[caver]

Its not just happening in China its all over the world

[emolcheung]

The reason why Chinese young people cannot find suitable jobs is that wage income is far less than living expenses, which is why experts currently recommend paying to work.

[parshu.]

Please talk about India too.... Here the percentage is unemployed people is lot more...

[siewkonsum]

But it is even worse in many other countries namely US, European countries, India, etc in the prevailing hard global situations. 😢