cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/60603043
Employment data from Tsinghua University — one of China’s top tertiary institutions — published on its website on Tuesday shows the number of graduates entering the manufacturing and energy sectors rose 19.1% year over year for the class of 2025.
Top employers for this year’s Tsinghua graduates include Huawei, BYD, State Grid Corporation of China, and China National Nuclear Corporation, the university said.
The same outlet reported yesterday:
The ‘Chinese Dream’ is shrinking for Gen Z
… Beijing reported [its] economy hit its 5% GDP growth target [in 2025. Exports held up. Industrial output stayed resilient …
Many young Chinese millennials and Gen Zers, who are trading down on everything from fashion to career ambition, are gripped in a deep sense of morass. The stepping stones to a solid, middle-class life seem to be sinking away, and the promise of long-term financial stability is crumbling as the housing market does the same.
“Even though a recession has not taken place, a lot of the symptoms of recession have been experienced by this young generation, particularly around unemployment and underemployment,” [says] Zak Dychtwald, who runs consumer research firm Young China Group …
Youth unemployment is high — around 17% — and that number also doesn’t capture the growing number of graduates taking jobs they never expected to need. Last year, Chinese social media lit up after a Ph.D. graduate posted about turning to food delivery work. Around the same time, a gas company announced it was recruiting graduates and postgraduates as meter readers.
“College education has become much more attainable for young adults,” said Zhou Yun, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Michigan. “Yet the returns to college education have not kept pace.”
You’ll find many of similar stories about China. It seems the Chinese students and graduates are unfortunately chasing whatever job they can get as the economy has been loosing spin for a long time. It’s not that great as their government wants to make the world believe.
Are they? Choosing “manufacturing”
I mean, they wanna eat right?
Gotta extract that surplus value somehow.
Maybe the sheen of tech and finance is limited. You’re, at best, enabling other people’s visions and at worst contributing to enshittification.
It was appealing for a while with the promises of big paydays, but if they stop keeping that up, it won’t stand on its merits.
Making actual things has an emotional charm. I work for a fintech and the best I can do is point at a card terminal and say “maybe my code is one of 932 obscure steps towards you financing a $2.59 hot dog…”