China’s unemployment rate continues to increase, leaving millions of university graduates facing survival challenges. Some are forced to take low-paying jobs or even rely on their parents’ retirement funds, becoming known as “unfinished children”.
According to reports from Reuters, the term “unfinished children” has quickly gained popularity on social media this year, echoing the tens of millions of incomplete construction projects plaguing China’s economy since 2021. Put simply, “unfinished children” are those who have studied diligently for over a decade, only to graduate and find themselves unemployed, like unfinished buildings with no accomplishments.
This summer, China witnessed a record high of 11.79 million fresh graduates. Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is grappling with various crises from trade wars, post-COVID-19 effects, ongoing housing crises, to tightened consumer spending, causing great distress. The CCP’s increased regulatory crackdown on finance, technology, and education industries further depresses the labor market.
In June last year, youth unemployment hit a historical high of 21.3%, prompting the CCP to stop releasing this highly scrutinized data. Yet a year later, the issue of youth unemployment remains a pressing concern.
Zhou Yun, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, told Reuters, “For many Chinese university graduates, the better job prospects, increased social mobility, and brighter life prospects that a university degree used to bring have increasingly become out of reach.”
“Unfinished children” find that with their qualifications, they struggle to secure employment in China’s dim economic environment. Some unemployed youth choose to return to their hometowns, living off parents’ retirement funds and savings, becoming “full-time children”.
Even those with postgraduate degrees are not spared from the challenges. With limited options, they either lower their expectations for high-paying jobs or settle for any job to survive. Some resort to criminal activities. The CCP’s procuratorate self-exposed in November last year that the number of underage adolescents indicted for telephone and online fraud surged by 68% in the first 10 months of 2023, with incidents of young graduates joining fraud groups also increasing.
27-year-old Zephyr Cao obtained a master’s degree from a prestigious university in Beijing last year. However, unable to find the ideal high-paying job, he returned to his hometown in Hebei. He began to question if all those years of studying were worth it.
“If I had worked for three to four years after my undergraduate studies, my salary might be on par with what I earn now with a master’s degree,” Cao said, contemplating pursuing a Ph.D. in hopes of a better situation in a few years.
Amada Chen, a recent graduate from Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, joined a state-owned enterprise in sales but quit after just a month. She attributed her resignation to a toxic work culture and unreasonable expectations from her boss. During the initial 15 days of the probation period, she worked 12-hour days but only earned 60 RMB per day (around $8.40).
“For a week, I cried every day,” she said. Initially wanting to work as a quality inspector or researcher, jobs matching her Chinese medicine expertise, after sending out over 130 job applications and mostly receiving responses for sales or e-commerce positions, she is reconsidering a career change, possibly pursuing modeling in the future.
According to a research report published by China Higher Education Research in June under the Ministry of Education of the CCP, the peak of fresh university graduates is projected to reach around 18 million in 2034.