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China news tagged with: employment (25)

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Young Foreigners Hunt Jobs in China Amid Crisis
AP reports on young foreigners who are escaping bleak job prospects in the U.S. by moving to China:
Young foreigners like Reasbeck are coming to China to look for work in its unfamiliar but less bleak economy, driven by the worst job markets in decades in the United States, Europe and some Asian countries.
Many do basic work such as teaching English, a service in demand from Chinese businesspeople and students. But a growing number are arriving with skills and experience in computers, finance and other fields.
“China is really the land of opportunity now, compared to their home countries,” said Chris Watkins, manager for China and Hong Kong of MRI China Group, a headhunting firm. “This includes college graduates as well as maybe more established businesspeople, entrepreneurs and executives from companies around the world.”
Watkins said the number of resumes his company receives from abroad has tripled over the past 18 months.
See a previous article on this topic from the New York Times.
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- September 20, 2009 2:21 PM
China’s Lost Files
From the Financial Times, a look at the personal employment file that follows all Chinese citizens throughout their lives:
While China has long since replaced its communist economy with a kind of raw capitalism and is fast ascending to the rank of superpower, its relationship with its own citizens remains partly stuck in its totalitarian past. The state continues to keep a secret dossier on every working citizen, which helps it retain its absolute power over the individual.
The fate that Mr Zhu and an estimated hundreds of thousands of others – although there are no reliable records on exactly how many – have suffered under this system serves as a reminder of the limits of Beijing’s market reforms.
According to Mr Zhu, back in 1994 – following an argument with his supervisor at ICBC – crucial documentation proving his cadre status, higher than that of his “worker” colleagues, disappeared from his employee file, making him unemployable for other institutions and stripping him of part of the pension benefits he had earned.
After suing ICBC without result, Mr Zhu is now going after its shareholders in a Kafka-esque fight to uncover the truth about his own past and salvage what remains of his future.
Read a previous report from the New York Times about what happens when a student’s file goes missing.
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- September 4, 2009 2:09 PM
No Vacancies On Horizon For 12m Job Seekers
From China Daily:
Job seekers in China will face an uphill battle in the coming months and as many as 12 million may not find work this year even if the country hits its 8 percent growth target, the nation’s top employment official said on Friday.
Yin Weimin, minister of human resources and social security, said China will be able to provide openings for about half of its 24 million job hunters, if it meets the growth target for 2009.
“The shortfall between supply and demand (in employment) will become larger than last year due to the failure to create enough job opportunities,” he said in a report carried in People’s Daily.
The country is trying to meet the “very tough” challenge of finding enough jobs for workers at a time when the global financial crisis is biting deep into the Chinese economy and the employment rate within export-oriented enterprises is falling sharply, he said.
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- August 22, 2009 3:58 AM
China Sees Migrants Head Back to Work
From Wall Street Journal:
The effects of China’s stimulus efforts are filtering into the job market, with the government reporting that most rural migrant workers have now found new jobs after the mass layoffs of late last year.
But the downturn is still being felt in weaker growth of household incomes, which could hold back consumer spending.
Wang Yadong, a deputy director-general at China’s labor ministry, said Tuesday that less than 3% of migrant workers who have returned to cities in recent months are still looking for jobs. And 95% of migrant workers preferred to seek work in cities this year rather than go back to farming, he said.
Though Mr. Wang declined to give more detailed figures, his report still represents the first official update of migrants’ job situation since February.
Update: A Los Angeles Times report on Wang’s remarks paint a different picture:
Beijing is trying to create jobs for laid-off workers, new college graduates, migrants and others, said Wang Yadong, deputy director of job promotion at the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.
“The employment situation in China is still very grave. We are still under enormous pressure to provide employment services,” Wang said at a news conference.
Officials have warned that China’s recovery is not firmly established despite an acceleration in economic growth last quarter to 7.9 percent over a year earlier, up from 6.1 percent the previous quarter. That was boosted by Beijing’s 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) stimulus, which is pumping money into the economy through building highways and other public works that have created construction jobs.
“To make things worse, the financial crisis has still not bottomed out,” Wang said. “There is still a great potential risk of unemployment.”
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- August 4, 2009 3:55 AM
Some China Universities “Fudge” Student Jobs Data
From Reuters:
Some Chinese universities have inflated graduate employment figures by issuing bogus work contracts as millions struggle to find work amid the downturn, an official newspaper said on Tuesday.
The financial crisis has intensified the problem of graduate unemployment, which stems from rapidly increasing enrolment at Chinese universities, many of which fail to adequately train their graduates.
If widespread, this could cast doubt on recent official reports that graduate unemployment has now substantially eased, with an estimated 6.1 million new graduates in China this year.
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- July 21, 2009 2:20 AM
China Jobs Slump Makes Graduates Swap Dreams for Civil Service
From Bloomberg:
Sun Yizhen considered her university degree in international trade the ticket to a prestigious career with a state-owned enterprise like Bank of China Ltd. in Beijing. Instead, she found herself huddled against a freezing wind in a middle school parking lot in Huai’an, waiting to interview for a job with the local tax collector.
“I never thought I’d go for civil-servant jobs,” said Sun, 21. “But the financial crisis is something that none of us would expect. We’re just desperate.”
The global financial meltdown is taking a toll on this year’s 6.1 million Chinese college graduates and the 1 million still unemployed from last year. The government said the 2009 official urban registered unemployment rate may reach 4.6 percent — a three-decade high — as collapsing exports drag gross domestic product to its lowest growth rate in nine years.
That is turning off the pipeline depositing new graduates with multinational corporations and state companies, forcing many students to lower their sights and consider the once- unthinkable for them: a civil-service career. The last test for central government openings attracted about 775,000 candidates – - or 56 for every job, a 20 percent jump from the year before.
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- May 19, 2009 1:56 AM
Millions of Chinese Graduates out of Work after Fivefold Rise in University Places
The Guardian takes a look at the increasingly grim job market for recent graduates in China:
More than 6 million Chinese students left university this year and up to a quarter are still struggling to find work. As the global slowdown bites, students such as Su know it can only get worse.
“The grim economic situation poses an unprecedented challenge for college graduates to get a proper job,” the ministry of education warned yesterday.
But the problems predate the crisis and mark both a success and failure on China’s part. “The number of graduates increased too quickly – by 2006 there were already five times more than in 1999. The labour market can’t take that big an increase in such a short time,” said Professor Yang Dongping of the Beijing Institute of Technology, the author of a report on graduate employment.
The expansion of higher education reflects China’s aspirations: the world’s factory needs more skilled workers to move up the chain, away from cheap mass production. Yet there are not yet enough higher-end jobs.
The report includes a video. See also “Graduates lower job aspirations” from Shanghai Daily and “Ministry urges better job guidance for graduates” from China Daily.
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- December 4, 2008 11:35 AM
China’s Young Generation Hampered By Lack Of Jobs
From Reuters:
Nineteen years after a brutal crackdown against student protesters at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, China’s youth are more focused on iPods, designer jeans and buying their first car than political reform.
Most of all they are worried about getting well paid jobs and a share of the newfound wealth that many Chinese professionals are enjoying as the economy surges ahead with double-digit growth.
That is easier said than done. Last summer, China had to provide jobs for nearly 5 million college graduates. This summer, 5.6 million more are getting ready to move out of dormitories and into the job market.
For a different perspective on the 1980s generation, read China’s ‘08 Generation Finds a Voice in Tumultuous Times from Reuters.
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- June 4, 2008 8:51 PM
Employment For The Masses In China
From Sydney Morning Herald:
Vice-Premier Zhang Dejiang warned a week ago that China’s employment situation was “grave” and the country desperately needed proactive job creation policies to lever college graduates into work.
Yet factory bosses all over the country were screaming that they couldn’t find enough workers and their wages bills were going through the roof.
Perhaps Zhang refuses to believe the fact of China’s rapidly tightening labour market because he is a particularly inflexible conservative. In the three years to 1980, when the rest of the country was reversing course towards an open, market-oriented economy, Zhang was studying for his economics degree at Kim Il Sung University in North Korea.
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- May 4, 2008 7:28 PM
Photo: Jiangsu University Students Seeking Work
November 20, 2007, the employment conference for 2008 graduates in Jiangsu Province was held in the National Exhibition Center in Nanjing. About 58,000 university students came to look for a job. Source: Netease.com.

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- February 28, 2008 11:00 PM
Please, Give Me a Job – Meng Zhang
From Global Voices Online:
Although there are almost half a year before graduation, the seniors in the universities of China have already thrown themselves into the cutthroat job-hunting war. With the meticulously-made resumes, those ready-to-be graduates are busy running about the various job fairs, which can often attract tens of thousands of senior students flocking to seek their ideal work. [Full Text]
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- December 18, 2007 2:55 PM
Employment Among the Youth Declines
From Chinanews:
The employment rate among Chinese youth is on the decline. Currently, China has thousands of young people who are not in education, employment or training, according to a report released by the Renmin University of China’s Population Development Studies Center, the China Youth Daily reported.
The report shows that in China, employment rate among people above the age of 16 is 69.7%, down by 4.4 percentage points compared with related employment rate in 2000. On the whole, employment rate among the youth is on a declining trend. [Full Text]
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- December 14, 2007 5:00 PM
Wages Up in China as Young Workers Grow Scarce – Keith Bradsher
The New York Times reports that as the labor supply in China diminishes, wages rise and so will prices of consumer goods here in the U.S.:
Chinese wages are on the rise. No reliable figures for average wages exist; the government’s economic data are notably unreliable. But factory owners and experts who monitor the nation’s labor market say that businesses are having a hard time finding able-bodied workers and are having to pay the workers they can find more money.
And higher wages in China are likely to lead to higher prices in the United States ” at the mall, at the grocery, even at the gas pump. [Full text]
[Image: At the Dahon bicycle plant in Shenzhen, China, pay has risen 10 to 15 percent a year, but productivity gains have held down costs, by Ariana Lindquist for The New York Times]
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- August 29, 2007 9:36 AM
Need A Street-sweeper Job? Job Deposit Please – Yangtze Evening News
China’s job market is probably getting tighter as quickly as the economy grows, thus the story. Translated from the Yangtze Evening News (Êâ¨Â≠êÊôöÊä•):
In Binhai County (Êª®Êµ∑) of Yancheng (ÁõêÂüé) in Jiangsu Province, the urban hygiene administration (ÁéØÂ¢ÉÂç´ÁîüÁÆ°ÁêÜÊâÄ) meant to create some job opportunities for relatives of its employees by hiring about 40 street-sweepers.
But this good-will job creation then turned into something outrageous: asking job seekers to put down 5,000 or 8,000-yuan job-start deposits before they can be hired. How much do these street-sweepers make? Starting 380 yuan a month, and 520 yuan after a try-out period.
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- August 26, 2007 8:17 AM
In pursuit of education

From Peering Into the Interior blog:
In China everyone wants to send their kids to College. In Yantai city, which is on the coast of Shandong, more than 20,000 students lined up to attend a College Recruiting Fair. Over 240 police officers were needed to help control the crowd. The sad thing is for those who even managed to get inside and sign up for some school, after graduation they still have to fight for a job. In one case 600 college graduates were competing for 5 toll booth operator positions. link to article in Chinese, [Full Text]
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- March 7, 2007 10:08 PM