China's Youth Unemployment At Record Highs: Meet The Jobless Graduates | Insight | Full Episode

[Music] as tens of millions of Chinese youths leave school jobs are few and far between religions [Music] more than one in five are now officially unemployed for a better life how did the world's second largest lard up here the post-covet recovery has been weaker in China than in many other countries no question about that disaster for China and its leaders have found strong links between Youth and employment rate and the drugs crime rate and many other issues it goes beyond the young people themselves it's very closely to the society thank you [Music] it's graduation season a Bittersweet time for students to Bid Farewell to some of their best friends and say goodbye to Campus Life foreign [Music] s who watch their children in cap and gown with immense pride in their hearts even when they can't personally show up [Music] but behind the pump and pageantry there's far more bitter than sweet in China [Applause] as 11.6 million students the highest number on record Finnish tertiary education this year the government decided to Halt the release of youth unemployment data foreign urban youth unemployment had a record-breaking 21.3 percent in June and economists who were expecting a further uptick once said this year to graduating cohort and joined the workforce if you look at historical trends of youth unemployment in China so you see that peaking in July and then coming down again towards the end of the year so it's quite consistent and quite conceivable that we will see a run-up for the next few months these graduates though don't need a data point to tell them it's a tough jobs Market out there the student on the left and goes by the Alias xiaomi like most Chinese graduates say his job search began last fall well before graduation but by February frustrated by the fruitless hunt he posted a video online [Music] [Music] the video went viral guttering close to a half a million views on video site and Billy Billy foreign [Music] country side of Shandong province xiaomi is one of the few people in his village to have gone to University and received higher education thank you [Music] there's a saying in Chinese knowledge can rewrite your destiny certainly had hoped and that would be his case [Music] all right foreign foreign as recently as 2019 youth unemployment in China was just about 10 percent but four years and a global pandemic later the figure has doubled to 21.3 percent it continued Rising even after the country abandoned the zero covet policy in December 2022 and reopened its economy which came as a surprise as most countries experienced an acute labor shortage a post-pandemic all that means the young person in China today is less likely to find a job and then its counterparts in almost all major developed economies this group is unique because they got especially hammered by zero covet policies young people tend to be employed disproportionately in the services sector so you know they're working at a restaurant they're working at a movie theater the reason that that became an issue was because during the zero covet policy the local governments received a mandate from the central leadership that mandate was you have to control covid so first thing that always goes is any kind of consumer facing Retail Services sectors service is always the first to go the post-covet recovery has been weaker in China than in many other countries isn't there for the recovery in employment for the Youth has been less vigorous than it almost everywhere else no question about that a few weeks ago just before he graduated xiaomi finally landed a job with a parcel delivery company in today's Shanghai where he lives shami will have to save for two years just to afford one square meter of housing owning a home seems completely out of reach foreign hand tires xiaomi has a master's degree which already gives him a leg up over millions of undergraduates [Music] in today's jobs Market employers are increasingly require at least a masters for office jobs even when the position hardly justifies it the so-called degree inflation is infuriating to job Seekers but it's become somewhat of a necessity to employers due to the sheer number of applicants vying for limited vacancies for example in March 7.7 million people apply for just 200 000 government jobs across China [Music] is foreign foreign is an employment consultant helping fresh en the Cutthroat and competition for jobs [Music] foreign paid clients and gets new inquiries on a weekly basis foreign also her online Alias she began to study civil engineering in 2015 during the height of China's property boom but only graduated with a masters when the market had come to a sudden and chaotic bust foreign according to Chinese media reports the country's a top 50 property developers cut 200 000 jobs in 2022 alone and there's no light at the end of the tunnel as millions of homes stand unfinished and prices continue to decline foreign a typical case of what economists call skills mismatch having studied to acquire a skill set that is no longer in demand well that could happen in any country it's an especially acute problem in China right now in recent years the government has pushed for drastic changes into the country's economy aside from the property Crackdown that has led to an implosion of the housing market China has also killed off at the after-school tutoring industry kneecap is once a fast-growing Tech Giants such as tencent and Alibaba and reigned in its vast of financial sector which led many banks to shrink some of the questionable economic policies also contributed to the rise of the youth unemployment rate these industries used to be very vibrant absorba a lot of young workers one of the largest of the companies is the new Oriental education Group New York real estate company in 2021 alone they laid off over 60 000 workers [Music] nevertheless China has a shrinking population which has raised alarms about a persistent and labor shortage yet Chinese youths can find jobs how could both things be true at the same time [Music] youth unemployment is on a tear in China it has continued Rising even after the pandemic or that more curious because China's overall jobless rate has been on the mend in almost every country the youth and permanent will be higher than their overall on permanent the young people they lack the connection or social networks that are sometimes necessary to help them find the job so naturally they are in a very disadvantaged position feel less experience so they tend to be employed into maybe more of an entry at level jobs so these are really the first jobs to to go when a downturn hits so really they are more vulnerable in a way according to data compiled by Chinese job site and 51 job 60 percent of China is the top 100 companies are cut back on campus recruitment in 2023 with a feel not hiring any fresh graduates at all foreign foreign [Music] ER for young people to find a job almost everywhere the 21.3 percent youth unemployment rate in China now is far from normal [Music] in China it is now really quite High given its level of income and that's almost four times the average unemployment rate in China so we're now looking at quite an unusual phenomenon [Music] 22 year old mayoku is entering the workforce this year and is already running into walls um [Music] man has an associate degree for which he spent three years in a tertiary vocational training institution that qualifies him as a college graduate but he's finding that his options are limited ma is a product of China's ambitious plan that is expanding its tertiary education massively in the last two decades back in 2000 only eight percent of the cohort could get into college but in 20 years the figure has risen eighth vote into 64 percent in 2021. in the last decade China has quickly caught up with Japan and is now approaching the level of Germany but this has created a mismatch while there are almost two jobs every each job Seeker in China overall for college graduates like ma the ratio is inverted with almost two applicants chasing one opening for people entering the labor force now they are far better educated than those leaving the labor force leaving the labor force now they're good about six to seven years of education entering the labor force they have about 12 years of education that's good for China's growth in the medium term and yes there might be some issues of friction unemployment some temporarily over-education if you want in other words China has prepared a Workforce for a high income economy but it's not one yet meanwhile employers are struggling to draft a young blue-collar workers as older workers retire that is true [Music] foreign which is here the high expectations for pay and comfort are on clear display at this tertiary training school in China's Southwest Chang studied Elderly Care a booming industry in China as the population enters rapid aging the schools is all its graduates and can be put into a job tomorrow except and many aren't interested in putting their degree to use um your mouth but yeah foreign [Music] the expectations of people also change and that means that they expect to have a job that has a certain level of income and a certain type of activity that is hard to match Zhang is more fortunate than most of its peers he can rely on his parents who own two restaurants they had hope to help him open his own care center after graduation but three years of covet lockdowns drained the family's coffers so now Chang is stuck with a degree he doesn't know what to do with it for now Chang joins China's growing ranks of full-time Sons and Daughters United under the slogan instead of being unwanted by Society I'd rather being pampered by my mommy and daddy foreign foreign youth unemployment is a bit of a luxury problem so richer countries have more of it China is a higher middle income country uh per capita income almost eleven thousand dollars so that is that is quite substantive therefore a lot of families can actually afford to have their graduated son or daughter to be unemployed for a bit so I mean I think that's cute and a dog is that China faces a big budget constraint you could have parents who are willing to um I guess tolerate so to speak their child's unemployment for a bit longer but at a certain time Family incomes do dwindle and so that push if not present today will become a lot more intensive to fight uh further down the road when the banker mom and dad runs low on cash well with the young and jobless spell disaster for China and its leaders when the young unemployment rate is high it poses a threat to the social and political stability and that was one of the factors contributing to Arab Spring [Applause] after 40 Years of Rapid economic growth the Chinese economy is slowing dramatically it grew less than one percent on quarter in a second quarter of 2023 even the supply of blue-colored jobs are now dwindling in a Countryside of ningxia 21 year old matsunjin is handling an unfamiliar task minding the cornfield oh my yeah much like his older brother Mayo who he hasn't had much luck of finding work this year even though in 2022 before he graduated from high school he had done a summer stint in a coastal city of Shaman at a factory that made the camera for the iPhone foreign [Music] much of the pandemic years China grew its exports but come 2023 as Western economies and Teeter on a recession and more countries seek to de-risk their economic dependence on China Chinese exports have taken a hit down 14.5 percent in July July was also the month at the younger mod finish high school and headed back to Shaman to try and find a stable job [Music] Ma's home is in shihaiku on the Chinese lowest plateau it's one of the driest places in China which makes a living of the land especially difficult [Music] today ma will set out for the city again to try his luck this time to ningxia's Capital in tran foreign [Applause] is encountered towards China's urban youth unemployment which only service those living in cities and towns a lot of people if they are unemployed in urban areas they leave the urban areas and once they lose their job they go back to the countryside back to their place of origin that's the outlet if you want for unemployment so those who don't measure that's one a Chinese characteristic that is also hard to actually measure correctly if even if you'd want to but it does distort the statistics a little bit [Music] to be at three months those who are not are excluded from the count to be sure this complies with the standards is set by the international labor organization and by this definition only one third of the 16 to 24 year old age group about 32 million people are in the workforce of which more than 6 million are unemployed but according to analysis the byp King University among the 64 million youths that are considered out of the workforce 16 million are not going to school so they could also use a job taken together more than 22 million Chinese youths could be sitting idle when the young unemployment rate is high it poses a threat to the social and political stability and that was one of the factors contributing to Arab Spring so the Chinese government is very concerned I I believe this is one of the top priorities at 21.3 and China's youth unemployment rate currently sits just a hair below the 23.4 percent in the Arab world in 2010. then Revolution erupted across the region toppling governments one after another in fact China doesn't have to look that far to see the effects of Youth and discontent in 1989 confronted by a faltering economy the Chinese government ended the practice of assigning jobs to college graduates instead young people had to go into the market and look for employment that change Prospect was a major factor behind the student movement that occupied Tiananmen Square there were maybe some broader concerns like we saw last year November with the the white paper protest that was largely led by University students that are of course always a little bit more revolutionary than the average population so I think that is one concern so in other words we're not talking about masters of unemployed that sort of take the street in protest frankly I think that is still a very low probability frustrations they've likened themselves to Konichi a much deriding fictional figure set in the late Qing Dynasty he studied for the Imperial exam wore the scholars robe but lived in dire poverty because he couldn't get a Scholar's job it even spun a popular rap song with a line I studied to build my country not to do food delivery alarmed by the discontent the government swiftly censored the song and directed stain media to issue a rebuke telling young people to take off their Scholars robes and working manual labor if that's the only worker they can get [Music] but what can China really do to get the youths working again [Music] [Music] at least one in five Chinese youths are out of a job and the Chinese government urgely wants to put them back to work the youth made up about 20 of total consumption in China so a big part of consumption is out of the workforce so that does affect the extent to which consumption can be a driver for growth in the long term there's a scarring effect your skill may be obsolete after a long period of unemployment so it will have a long lasting effect their income will not be able to recover to the normal level even 10 years or 15 years of the work experience I have found the strong links between youth unemployment rate and the drugs crime rate and many other issues social issues it goes beyond the young people themselves it's very costly to the society in Hernan the government staged a 100-day campaign to achieve zero unemployment in Sichuan the governor has asked companies to hire as many as possible and as early as possible they've now provided subsidies for employers to hire the youth they have ordered State Enterprises to hire more youth in internship positions and some provinces have been even encouraged the youth to go out on to the countryside and find a job foreign to the countryside evokes some not so pleasant memories in China in 1968 to relieve the pressure on Urban jobs Mao Zedong started to return to the countryside movement in the next decade 16 million youths were made to leave the city so they grew up in and work as farmers in rural areas where they suffered from cold hunger and at times brutal treatment in the end the policy didn't solve when China's employment problem it merely delayed it in 1978 when a policy was finally abandoned the youths returned to the cities angry and jobless [Music] it's an episode of Chinese leader Xi Jinping had personally experienced he said it helped build his character as he caught on today's youths to do the same that's different of course from the sending down the countryside in during the cultural revolution but nevertheless it was a bit of a surprise for when I read that into the into the newspaper some mutes have heated the coal oh what's this hole Yeah ciao and his friends who recently came to the countryside of Junction to work with the producer of salted ducks a local delicacy they hope to find a bigger market for it through live streaming and have been working to create an online following on doyin the Chinese version of tiktok foreign [Music] foreign the job starts with raising ducklings something they know nothing about it foreign [Music] ran a dance school for kids a lucrative business until trying to crack down on the after-school tuition business um foreign [Music] the countryside life might seem idyllic but it's still quite an adjustment for chow and his friends who have lived in a city for years [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] success has been getting people to move from the countryside to the cities from agriculture to manufacturing and to Services which has much higher productivity [Music] try to encourage people to go back to the countryside that would be a drop in productivity and probably in the long term that would not be a good strategy for high productivity growth that the government's looking at I think the other policy measures such as weight subsidies and providing temporary employment in state Enterprises is not such a bad deal of course much better would be if demand were to pick up and jobs would be created in a in a more natural way for that a much broader package of reforms and maybe a little bit of stimulus would be necessary for now the Chinese government has lowered interest rates and signaled support for private businesses but such measures will take time to bear fruit meanwhile for the youths Who Remain jobless some have turned to unusual ways to make a buck she told me yeah graduated in 2022 but after a year of unemployment she's now turned to live streaming foreign foreign [Music] industry like live streaming just like Athletics and so forth you're gonna bump up against the economics of superstars so a few people are just going to rake it in they're gonna kill it most people are going to be Treading Water maybe even below water um so it's not necessarily a viable industry while she waits for her days of online Superstar then lingshan does what she can to stretch her money by hunting for discounts on the online shopping platform taobao holiday uh [Music] foreign more to the children here mobile yeah yeah so what you want is successful young people leaving University or school and getting a job and then you get married you get an apartment you get kids you get a car once you get off that train that of course will not happen the capital of the younger Mars trip to the city has paid off having found work at a construction site the older mom having spent three more years in school and tens of thousands of dollars on tuition is unwilling to take the same kind of job for him the search continues [Music] [Music]

Channel: CNA Insider

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Id: TY1a00j5YAk

Length: 46min 9sec (2769 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 05 2023