Last April, only 48% of potential Chinese graduates received job offers. Companies, meanwhile, are increasingly squeezing their employees.
China has a job market problem. Especially regarding new graduates. Just take a look at data released by human resources company Zhaopin, according to which last April only 48% of potential Chinese graduates had received offers, a figure down 2.4% compared to the same period taken under consideration in the previous year.
Furthermore, within two months of graduation, more than half of undergraduate and graduate students looking for work have not secured a position. The percentage of new graduates with informal offers stood at around 75% until 2019, before the Covid pandemic. The bid rate fell below 50% in spring 2022, due to the government lockdown in Shanghai in an attempt to stop the spread of the virus.
At the same time, private sector companies that traditionally served as sources of employment for young and very young people – real estate and education industries, for example – are restricting hiring. These companies are suffering, given that the government has taken action to curb their oligopolistic behavior and prevent the advent of market bubbles.
Result: as explained by Nikkei Asian Review, the worsening of profits at these companies has led to a reduction in hiring. Another result: with the decline in hiring, many companies - primarily technology ones - are squeezing their staff to the limit.
An example of this latest trend was immortalized by the Financial Times, which quoted verbatim the statements coming from the mouth of the founder of JD.com, Richard Liu, for whom there is no space for anyone who wants a balance between work and private life. “We have employees who prefer to enjoy life, who put life first and work second. I can understand not wanting to work hard, everyone makes their own choices. But if you think like that, I can only tell you that you are not our brothers,” Liu said in a pep talk to his employees.
What happens to new Chinese graduates
Students are simply increasingly moving away from private sector jobs. According to Zhaopin, only 13% of student job seekers want to work for a private company, down from 25% in 2020. In the tech sector, many workers in their thirties have to deal with restructuring and other obstacles, which fueled a thousand doubts regarding the security of their jobs.
Moreover, 48% of student job seekers would prefer to work in a state-owned company, and the percentage is increasing. Suffice it to say that, increasingly searching for job stability, students have taken exams for public officials by storm, with an average of 77 participants for each available place in 2024.
In China, there is another significant problem: the increase in the number of new graduates. This phenomenon, mostly due to the growing emphasis on advanced degrees, has exacerbated the job shortage. According to the Beijing Ministry of Education, new graduates in summer 2024 will reach a record figure of 11.79 million, an increase of 210,000 compared to the previous year.
Chinese universities are churning out too many specialized and highly trained graduates, but jobs for them are missing. Or rather: they are no longer there waiting for them as was the case until a few years ago.
The pressure increases
Alongside the pressure of not being able to find a job worthy of the studies undertaken and the expectations of individual students, we also find another type of pressure: that of companies. executives in China’s technology sector, for example, are forced to face a new reality of low growth, increasing competition, and investor apathy. The consequence is that many of them are cutting staff at their companies and making tougher demands on those they choose to retain.
As the FT pointed out, engineers in China have never enjoyed the perks that their colleagues in Silicon Valley can flaunt, where employees have perks like on-site doctors and sushi bars. It is no coincidence that Jack Ma, the famous founder of the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, has extolled, in the past, the 996 working model for technology companies: working from 9:00 to 21:00, six days a week.
In recent years this pressure has eased, thanks also to the Chinese president Xi Jinping’s requests for greater social equity. Now, though, as growth slows and stock prices suffer (China’s top five publicly traded tech companies have collectively lost about $1.3 trillion in market value from their 2021 peak levels), executives are making worrying step back.
Original article published on Money.it Italy 2024-07-04 07:00:00. Original title: La crisi del lavoro scuote la Cina
