Chinese graduates face an increasingly difficult jobs market. Churning out 12 million of them every year, China’s economy is suffering from a mismatch between the jobs available and the qualifications of jobseekers. Between 2018 and 2021 the number of graduates increased by more than 20%.
In response, Chinese authorities have announced subsidies for companies that hire unemployed university leavers and want state owned companies to recruit a million more. At one large Chinese cigarette producer it was reported nearly a third of the 135 newly enrolled production line workers held a master’s degree, while the rest were all undergraduates. Some from China’s high-ranking universities.
Chinese universities report employment rates of over 95 percent every year. Yet many require that a graduate provide the university with a letter of employment prior to the release of their diploma. But this leads to the forging of employment letters in order to obtain their qualifications, one factor that is leading to employment rates being higher than they really are.
But, as the economy has slowed and employment opportunities fallen, graduate unemployment (or ‘underemployment’, where people move into jobs, they are overqualified for) is part of a wider problem, with official data showing unemployment among the 16- to 24-year-olds hitting a record 20% at the start of 2023 – about four times the broader rate. High levels of youth unemployment will have a negative effect on overall spending and threaten economic growth – young people in China accounting for nearly 20% of consumption, according to a Goldman Sachs.
A generation ago, the route to success in China was to work hard, get married and have children. But with employees working longer hours and housing prices rising faster than incomes, many young Chinese fear they will be the first generation not to do better than their parents. Consequently, more are considering ‘lying flat’ — refusing to pursue a career, leaving the workforce or even the country. To lie flat also means to forgo marriage, not have children, stay unemployed and eschew material wants such as a house or a car. It is the complete opposite of what China’s leaders continue to emphasise. In addition, as the Chinese population gets older, the dependency ratio gets higher, putting more pressure on youth.
But the reality is that, despite the devaluation of academic qualifications, most Chinese young people become more desperate to obtain them and by any means necessary. In China the Ministry of Public Security has launched a huge crackdown on exam cheating, particularly in relation to the gaokao, China’s national university entrance exam. According to China Daily, people who organise cheating could be sentenced to three to seven years imprisonment plus a fine, while examinees who carry or use cheating equipment and materials will be stopped from taking the relevant examinations for between one and three years.
https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202206/08/WS629ff89fa310fd2b29e614d4.html
There’s also been clampdowns on private tutoring agencies that lure parents to their ‘after hours’ services.
However the disjuncture between education and employment is widespread across the globe, particularly in developing countries where education has been promoted as providing social mobility and increased prosperity, but where the economy has not been able to expand at the same level. In countries like the UK, it has been used by right-wing politicians and their think-tanks to argue young people are being ‘over-educated’ and that rather than be encouraged to enter university, vocational qualifications and apprenticeships should be promoted, or reinvented as alternatives, leading to the ‘middle jobs’ that many graduates end up in anyway.
But this strategy has failed and this summer will see record numbers take academic qualifications and record numbers apply to universities, despite the fees.
Education, Economy and Society 
Great post! A few years back there used to be similar stories from India about taxi drivers with MAs; I don’t know what is happening there now. Similar misrepresentation of exam results and ‘professional jobs’ for graduates in UK too, tho here it is the unis themselves tweaking the figures rather than the students (so far as we know!). Good title too, well illustrated by a Chinese youth lying flat! (Goldman Sacks report?)
Replying to myself with a further comment that this is going to muck up the business models of many UK unis as they rely on recruiting overseas, especially Chinese, students.
Bob Waugh, former-lecturer in Education Studies at Oxford Brookes Uni, replied on Facebook:
The idea that you can actually tie specialist learning to job outcomes is pretty 19th/early 20th century. Surely it is made obsolete by the rapid pace of tech change and knock-on effects.
Add on increased longevity – and pressure to defer retirement – and a very different future looms.