China’s Graduate Flood
China’s young generation is getting frustrated. They work very hard on a good education – and increasingly end up unemployed.
August 19, 2024
The unemployment rate in China for people aged 16 to 24 in cities reached a record high of 21.3% in June 2023.
Graduates of universities and vocational and technical colleges accounted for 70% of the unemployed young in 2022 – up from 9% two decades ago.
As a percentage of the youth population, those graduates amounted to 47% in 2020.
There are about a hundred elite universities in China. Acceptance into one of them can change a young person’s life.
Experts reckon that graduates of these schools earn roughly a third more from their first job than graduates of second-tier universities.
China has around 3,000 tertiary-education institutions in total, including lower-tier universities and vocational colleges.
Students from poor counties in China were seven times less likely than their urban counterparts to attend university — and 11 times less likely to get into an elite one.
Over a third of Chinese children live in rural areas.
The overall official unemployment rate in China stood at 5.2% in the first quarter of 2024.
Sources: The Economist, Statista
Takeaways
China’s young generation is getting frustrated. They work very hard on a good education – and increasingly end up unemployed.
