We reached Tangjialing after leaving behind Beijing’s smooth six and eight-lane highways and gleaming skyscrapers, the cheap KFCs and luxury malls. We drove past barren farmland and stopped under an arch that proclaimed we had reached Tangjialing. Beyond it, stood crowds of students waiting for buses while they munched pancakes and steamed buns sold on handcarts.

There was no coffeeshop or a teahouse in sight, just rows of former two-storey buildings where fifth and sixth floors had been added to accommodate the business of migrants. An unknown number of these residents depend on public toilets and baths hundreds of meters away from their 10 sq m cubbyholes.

Tangjialing has become a centre of Chinese media attention as a reflection of the fast-paced economy’s inability to create enough meaningful jobs for the annual six million-plus Chinese graduates in their own hometowns. When we wandered down the narrow streets, the students refused to chat.

But Sheng Fei Guo, a bespectacled intern who wears his IBM identity card even on weekends, showed us his spartan one-room apartment worth 500 yuan (Rs 3,500) in rent. We asked him if there was a community place with benches where we could chat. He laughed.

Beijing Today writes that Tangjialing is soon to be bulldozed and rebuilt.

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Some estimate that 30 percent of Chinese engineering students will not find jobs after graduation and that the average pay of the college graduates is now approaching that of rural migrant workers. At the same time, factories in Guangdong province cannot find enough labor. What is going on?

The idea that China is running out of unskilled labor is a myth. The news reports typically concentrate on Guangdong but this does not mean the country as a whole is short of unskilled labor. Development in rural areas in the past six years has meant that rural residents, previously denied economic opportunities close to home, now have a choice between going to Guangdong and staying in their hometowns. Many choose to stay. Any “labor shortage” in Guangdong is mostly evidence that the factories should not be located there in the first place.

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They are smart, industrious and marginalised, huddling together for comfort.

Hordes of China’s underemployed or underpaid university graduates have formed squalid enclaves on the fringes of the country’s big cities, earning themselves the label yi zu or ‘ant tribe’.

As their ranks swell, some observers have warned of the dangers that a mass of young and frustrated people – doing jobs they are overqualified for – might pose to social stability.

Last month, several delegates at Beijing’s annual parliamentary session urged the government to build better housing for these graduates and to do more to help them find jobs.

There are a million ‘ants’ massed around major cities, with about 100,000 in Beijing alone, estimates sociologist Lian Si, who led a two-year study that was published in a book last September.

A typical ‘ant’ hails from rural China, is a graduate of a non-brand-name university aged between 22 and 29, and earns no more than 2,000 yuan (S $414) a month working long hours as an insurance salesman, computer technician or waiter.

The LA Times has published other case studies on members of the “Ant Tribe” as well as a the socio-historical background to the crisis:

… an estimated 3 million jobless or underemployed college graduates in China, products of a mass social experiment by central planners to churn out more professionals for China’s economic development. Nicknamed the Ant Tribe, after the title of a recent book documenting their struggles, they now constitute a vast army of educated young people whose growing restlessness worries the Chinese government.

“They represent the pain and confusion of a whole generation,” wrote author Lian Si, a sociologist who spent two years living with and researching the graduates. “When all their anger and grievances reach a critical point, a special event could trigger a large-scale mass movement.”

Recognizing the potential threat, Beijing is urging state-run companies to put college graduates on their payrolls, and it’s encouraging degree holders to work in the countryside. Others are being steered into the military. State media have reported female graduates seeking marriage just end their fruitless job hunt.

The ants’ story began a little over a decade ago, in 1999, when the Chinese government launched an ambitious plan to boost university enrollment by 30% annually. At the time, the country’s factories were suffering from the Asian financial crisis. Planners believed a rise in college rolls would help China transition from a largely export-driven, low-wage manufacturing economy to a more balanced one populated by upwardly mobile white-collar workers.

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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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Post tags: employment, financial crisis 2009, foreigners in China
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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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Post tags: employment, personal files, privacy
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Post tags: employment, Nanjing, photos, universities
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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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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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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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Post tags: employment, labor supply, wages
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In Binhai County (滨海) of Yancheng (盐城) in Jiangsu Province, the urban hygiene administration (环境卫生管理所) 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.

(...)
Read the rest of Need A Street-sweeper Job? Job Deposit Please – Yangtze Evening News (139 words)

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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]

(...)
Read the rest of In pursuit of education (0 words)

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Here are some photos from the event, via The Leaking Wall blog:

(...)
Read the rest of Photo Series: More than Thirty Thousand Students at Zhengzhou Employment Fair (5 words)

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This is not the job Zhou Long had in mind.

“When I was studying law in college, I never imagined that I would be selling pork after my graduation,” said Zhou, 24, who works for a supermarket in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province. He received his bachelor’s degree from the Southwest University of Political Science & Law last year.

Zhuang Lei, 24, graduated from Xuzhou Normal University in Jiangsu Province this year with a bachelor’s degree in law. Although she tried her best to find a job related to the law in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu, she is now a secretary at a small company in Suzhou. [Full Text]

See also The Structure of Legal Education in China by Huang Jin, A Brief Introduction to the Legal Education in China by Wang Weiguo, From the Rule of Man To the Rule of Law by June Shih, and Clinical Legal Education in China: In Pursuit of a Culture of Law and a Mission of Social Justice by Pamela N. Phan.

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