cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/56076148
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Each year, millions more graduates are thrust into China’s already saturated jobs market. The situation for this year’s cohort, flooding into an increasingly crowded pool of applicants fighting for an insufficient number of positions, is arguably the bleakest yet.
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China’s youth employment has been a “persistent issue since 2020” which has “not meaningfully improved”, according to an Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) researcher, who did not wish to be named. The researcher says this trend was initially fuelled by China’s move towards a “productivity- and manufacturing-driven growth model” of high-value industries such as electric vehicles, batteries, semiconductors and robotics.
“As the economy shifted, a mismatch emerged between the skills being supplied by graduates and those demanded by the labour market,” the researcher says, adding that the problem has been exacerbated more recently by AI’s “transformative impact”.
“Entry-level jobs are often easier to automate or replace, making young workers particularly vulnerable,” the researcher says. “Even graduates with backgrounds in IT services have seen some entry-level tasks increasingly automated by AI.”
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While the move towards AI- and tech-focused degrees is a universal trend, the speed at which it is unfolding in China’s universities is unique, according to Charles Jeffery Sun, the founder of the consultancy China Education International.
“China’s higher education is centrally governed. When Beijing sets a strategic direction, implementation across hundreds of universities happens rapidly,” he says.
In response to directives from Beijing for degrees to better match labour demands, Chinese universities culled 12,200 undergraduate programmes, mostly in the arts and humanities, between 2021 and 2025, while introducing 10,200 in emerging fields. It is a situation Sun describes as “painful for many graduates”, but part of a “long‑overdue reckoning”.
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Further hindering the jobs market is China’s slowing economy, with Beijing adjusting its GDP growth target to the lowest since 1991 – a range of 4.5% to 5% – as it grapples with aggressive global tariffs, weak domestic consumption, and a shrinking and rapidly ageing population.
[It must be noted here that many economist question the official narrative of a Chinese 5% GDP growth.]
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