China's surge of college graduates finds white-collar work elusive

A heavily blue-collar economy and the global financial crisis have made it tough for graduates, whose numbers have risen sharply.

By Carol Huang | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor from the February 4, 2009 edition  

Hire Me: Some 40,000 job-seekers peddled résumés at a December job fair in Beijing. The financial crisis and a still blue-collar economy has forced college grads to adjust expectations.
China Photos/Getty Images
雇我吧。2008年12月，北京，大约四万名求职者在一场招聘会中兜售简历。金融危机和蓝领主导的经济迫使大学毕业生们调整自己的预期。（China Photos/Getty Images）

Searching: Graduates checked lists at a job trade fair in Kunming Province last month. At a recent job fair in Beijing, many companies registered to attend did not bother to show up.
ZUMA Press/Newscom 寻觅。上个月，在昆明地区一次招聘会上，毕业生们查看（参会单位）名单。在北京最近一次举行的一次招聘会上，许多注册参加的公司最终没有露面。

Just a Little Competition: Applicants surged into a university last month in Wuhan, Hubei Province, to take the entrance exam for postgraduate studies. Despite a new emphasis on pursuing higher education, white-collar jobs are not easy to find.
Reuters
不过是一场小小竞争。上个月，湖北省武汉市一所大学内，汹涌的应试者参加研究生考试。尽管追求更高的教育得到强调，但白领工作仍然难以寻觅。

 

SOURCE: National Bureau of Statistics of China/Rich Clabaugh/STAFF
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As if college seniors hadn't watched their job prospects sink low enough.

Students from Guangdong Province, China's wealthiest region, are so desperate for work they're applying for jobs as nannies – and getting rejected, a local paper reported last month.

It's probably not what young people had in mind as they slogged through years of tough exams, buoyed by the new emphasis on higher education and the prospect of white-collar employment in a booming China.

Some 6.1 million grads are expected to flood the job market this year – joining the 27 percent of last year's diploma-holders who still haven't found work. Instead, they're finding deserted job fairs, hiring freezes, and salaries that migrant workers might expect. Confronted by global recession and a heavily blue-collar economy, China's educated elite are having to lower their expectations – frustrating families and putting the government on alert ahead of the 20th anniversary of the student-led Tiananmen protests.

There's "a mismatch between expectations and realities, exacerbated by the current economic slowdown," says Thomas Rawski, a China expert at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. "It really is a clash of preferences."

The oversupply of students first ballooned in 1999, when China erected a flurry of colleges in an effort to mint more of the scientists and managers it needed for a 21st-century economy. It also sought to absorb a burst of teenagers born in a post-Cultural Revolution baby boom after 1976.

Enrollment rose quickly, from 3 percent of college-age students in the 1980s to 20 percent today.

Despite the rapid expansion, only 6 percent of the population now holds college degrees. Not surprisingly, graduates expect elite jobs, as do the relatives who footed their tuition bill.

Topping the A-list are government jobs, which pay modestly but offer benefits and security. Last year, some 750,000 students took the civil service exam – and only 2 percent could expect slots. Big companies draw students, too: Though less stable than the civil service, business jobs pay well and provide better training.

And location is everything. Youths from across the country are flocking to east coast metropolises like Beijing and Shanghai.

But even these megacities can't furnish enough of the gleaming office jobs that graduates want.

China's export-dependent economy deals mainly in manufacturing and processing, which require unskilled workers. The white-collar end of the production process – design and sales – mostly happens overseas, says Lai Desheng, director of the Center for Labor Market Research at Beijing Normal University.

And the skilled-labor positions in between, with their 14-hour days on factory floors, fail to tempt many college grads, he adds.

Don't put me on assembly

Don't ask Meng Xiao to assemble laptops. The 2008 grad from Hebei Province hopes to design software one day. But like others in this tight job market, he's lowering his sights.

"Let me first find a job, then talk preferences," he said mildly at a depressing job fair last month. Young hopefuls milled about empty recruiting booths in a fluorescent-lit lobby. Only a few firms registered for the fair had showed up.

Hiring freezes are spreading: Some 65 percent of businesses in the Pearl River Delta, an economic hot spot, don't plan to recruit graduates this year, a survey by the Kingfield Management headhunting service found last month.

The government hopes to keep urban employment to 4.6 percent this year – the highest rate since 1980, according to official figures.  

Even "Ivy Leaguers" are throwing demands overboard. Before the crisis, 5,000 yuan ($735) a month would have been "acceptable" in pricey Beijing, says one senior from Peking University, China's top school. But her roommates have settled for jobs paying monthly salaries of 3,000 yuan and 1,700 yuan ($440 and $250).

By comparison, a migrant worker in Shenzhen, the costliest of factory cities, earned about 1,500 yuan ($220) a month with overtime before the downturn.

For weeks, the government has been trying to lower students' expectations. State media frequently report how bad the job market is and how hard leaders are working to improve it.

Measures announced Jan. 7 sought to spruce up second-tier paths. One offered subsidies and loan forgiveness to graduates who work for a few years in China's less-developed western provinces.

Those carrots have been dangled for years, but most grads aren't biting, says Professor Rawski. It's like asking New Yorkers to move to West Virginia.

"It's too hard" to live out west, says the Peking University senior, laughing at the idea that any of her friends would consider it.

Start my own firm? Maybe not.

The Jan. 7 policies also encourage youths to start businesses – an even tougher sell.

Chinese students are rewarded all their lives for high scores on established exams, not for risk-taking or creativity, so most graduate with little stomach for entrepreneurship. And China's business jungle – dominated by state-backed oligopolies and other corporate giants, and layers of regulation and corruption – is no place for novices.

Despite the bottleneck from college to cubicle, the authorities have not choked off college expansion. They have reined it in, though, to 5 percent annual growth, down from 30 percent a decade ago.

"Talent is the wealth of the country," says Professor Lai. "If China wants to develop, it must raise its education level."

The freedom that today's youths enjoy in choosing their careers is also "a measure of progress in society, despite unemployment," he continues.

The previous generation worked in jobs picked by the state. Textbooks warned that, under capitalism, "graduation means unemployment."

Some youths today seem to embrace the added risk and reward.

Zhang Yueling – whose parents earn a living making mining tools from home – hopes one day to design computer chips. The 2008 grad quit her job in central China last month and moved to Beijing to find a company that would help her achieve that dream.

Her previous job paid 3,000 yuan a month ($440), but she's willing to work for 2,000 yuan ($295).

She's all alone in the big city, wandering an abandoned job fair on a freezing weekday morning.

But she's not discouraged: "I don't expect to find a job soon, but I'll keep looking till I do."  　　中国大学毕业生的发现
　　作者：Carol Huang
　　翻译：Commondata
　　《基督教科学箴言报》
　　2009年2月4日　　-----------------
　　即便把目标放的足够低，但大学毕业生们仍然看不到自己的就业希望。
　　来自中国最为富裕的地区——广东省的学生们，甚至绝望的去申请保姆工作，但连这也遭到了拒绝，上个月一家当地报纸对此进行了报道。
　　这不太可能是那些年轻人的真实想法，因为他们在过去多年之中已经经历过各种艰苦的考试，支撑他们的是国家对于高等教育的强调，以及中国繁荣期的白领就业前景。
　　今年预计将有六百一十万毕业生涌入就业市场，此外，去年取得文凭的学生中还有百分之二十七仍旧没有找到工作。相反，他们发现等待自己的是招聘会的遗弃，雇用的冰封，以及堪比民工的薪金水平。迎面遭遇全球衰退的冲击，以及身处这样一个蓝领经济之中，中国那些受过教育的精英们不得不放低自己的预期，这不仅让他们的家庭深受打击，也让政府对不久之后的天安门学生运动二十周年投以警惕的目光。
　　这是“一种理想与现实的落差，在目前经济放缓的形势下被恶化”，宾西法尼亚州的匹兹堡大学中国专家托马斯·劳斯基认为。“实质上是一次对于偏好的撞击”。
　　学生供应过剩始于1999年，当时中国新建一系列大学，试图铸造科学家和经理人，以满足二十一世纪需求。而且希望籍此吸纳1976年文革之后生育高峰期出生的青少年人。
　　入学人数迅速增长，1980年代该数字是适龄学生的百分之三，如今激增至百分之二十。
　　尽管入学人数快速膨胀，但仍仅有百分之六人口接受过大学教育。所以，毕业生对精英工作的期待并不令人惊奇，他们也希望籍此对那些为他们支付学费的亲人做些什么。
　　高级职位清单中，政府职务名列前茅，虽然只有略显寒酸的薪水，但却提供了奖金补助和社会保障。去年，大约七十五万名学生参加文职公务考试，但预计仅有百分之二的人被录用。大公司也吸引着学生们：与政府文员相比，虽然不太稳定，但商务职位薪酬优厚，而且提供更好的培训。
　　位置决定一切。遍及全国的年轻人正在向东海岸大都会城市集中，比如北京和上海。
　　而且，即便那些大都市无法供应充足的闪亮职位，但毕业生们仍然趋之若鹜。
　　北京师范大学劳动力市场研究中心负责人赖德生（音）认为，在出口依赖型的中国经济中，主体是制造和加工业，它们并不需要技术工人。白领职位仅位于生产过程两端——设计和销售，而这些工作绝大多数都在海外。
　　技术劳工位于设计和销售两者之间，但他们每天要在工厂工作十四小时，这不足以吸引太多大学生，他补充说。
　　不要把我放在装配线上
　　可别让孟晓（音）去装配笔记本电脑。这位来自河北省2008届毕业生希望每天设计软件。但像其他处于这个紧张的劳动力市场中的人一样，他压低了自己的目标。
　　“首先让我找到一个工作，然后再谈论选择”，上个月，在一次令人压抑的招聘会上，他温和的说到。闪闪发亮的大厅中，年轻的希望在空空如也的招聘摊位之间游走，但注册参加这次招聘的公司只有很少亮相。
　　雇用冻结正在蔓延之中，锦田管理顾问公司在上个月的一项调查中发现，作为一个经济热点地区——珠江三角洲的企业中大约有百分之六十五职位今年不计划招收应届毕业生。
　　政府今年希望将失业率保持在4.6%以下，而这是自1980年代以来官方数字的最高水平。
　　即使“常青藤”高校成员也热衷于投递简历。危机发生之前，5000元人民币（735美元）在北京只是个“可以接受”的月薪数目，一名毕业于中国顶级高校北京大学的应届毕业生表示。不过，她那已经某得职位的室友每月如今只能得到3000元和1700元的薪水。
　　与之相比，在中国最为豪华的工业城市深圳，衰退开始之前一名超时工作的流动劳工每月可以赚到1500元人民币（220美元）。
　　几个星期以来，政府希望压低学生们的预期。国营媒体时常报道就业市场如何糟糕，以及领袖们如何努力工作并改善这一情况。
　　一月七日，政府宣布一系列措施，试图为就业另辟蹊径。其中一项将为愿意去中国西部不发达省份工作的学生提供津贴，并免除（助学）贷款。
　　这根胡萝卜吊在毕业生面前已经有年头了，但绝大多数人并不买帐，劳斯基教授表示。这就好比让纽约人迁去西弗吉尼亚。
　　对生活在西部之外的人来说“这太难了”，这位北大应届生表示，她和她的朋友们对此均一笑置之。
　　创立自己的企业？不太可能。
　　一月七日的政策中还包括鼓励年轻人创业，这恐怕是更为棘手的一项推销。
　　对中国学生来说，一生中的全部奖赏都是为了选拔考试中的高分，而不是冒险或创造，因此，绝大多数毕业生并不具备企业家气质。而且，在中国的商业丛林中，占主导地位的是国营垄断企业和商业巨头，而那是一个循规蹈矩且腐败堕落的阶层。因此，这里根本没有新手的空间。
　　尽管在大学和写字楼之间出现瓶颈，但当局并没有停止大学的扩张。不过，他们也在逐步控制这种扩张的增速，目前已经从十年前的每年30%回落至5%。
　　“人才是国家的财富”，赖教授表示。“如果中国要发展，就必须提升国家的教育水平”。
　　如今的年轻人可以自由选择自己的职业生涯，这也是“一项社会改进措施，尽管有失业”，他接着说。
　　过去，毕业生的工作由国家分配。教科书上曾这样警告：在资本主义社会里，“毕业意味着失业”。
　　如今，一些年轻人似乎接受了这种附加的风险，以及由此带来的报酬。
　　张跃玲（音）的父母在家乡以制作采矿工具维生，她期盼有朝一日从事设计计算机芯片的工作。为此，这名2008届毕业生于上个月辞去了在中国中部地区的工作来到北京，希望找到一家可以帮助自己达成梦想的公司。
　　她的上一份工作每月可拿到三千元（440美元）薪水，但现在她愿意为了两千块（295美元）而工作。
　　寒冷的周末清晨，她只身在这座巨大城市中一个被遗弃的招聘会上游荡。
　　不过，她并没有灰心：“我想不会很快找到工作，但我也不会放弃”。