After the Chinese Communist government implemented revisions to exclude students from school in their statistical methods, the national urban unemployment rate for 16-24 year olds in China, excluding students, rose from 17.8% in July to 18.9% in August, reaching a new high in 20 months since the change in statistical methods.
The latest statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics of the Chinese Communist regime on September 17th showed that the youth unemployment rate in August was 18.9%, targeting labor force aged 16 to 24, excluding students. The youth unemployment rate in July was 17.8%, indicating a 1.1 percentage point increase in August.
The 18.9% youth unemployment rate set a new high since the change in statistical methods in December 2023.
China’s youth unemployment rate exceeded 20% for three consecutive months from April to June 2023, reaching a historical high of 21.3% in June. Subsequently, the Chinese Communist regime temporarily suspended the public release of youth unemployment rates.
In January 2024, the National Bureau of Statistics of the Chinese Communist regime announced the youth unemployment rate in December 2023 as 14.9%, resuming the publication of youth unemployment rate statistics.
Official sources stated that adjustments were made to the unemployment rate statistics by age group from December 2023 onwards, with the exclusion of students aged 16-24 and 25-29 from the calculation.
The continuously rising youth unemployment rate in China highlights the severity of the current employment situation. This year, the number of graduates from Chinese universities is expected to reach 12.22 million, an increase of 430,000 from the previous year, indicating tremendous pressure in the job market. The issue of “difficulty in finding employment” among young graduates has become one of the two major challenges facing Chinese society.
In recent years, news of graduates from prestigious Chinese universities working as waiters, street vendors, and delivery drivers has been on the rise. The term “full-time children” has emerged as a popular term in Chinese society to mask the high unemployment rate. Unemployed youth staying at home are portrayed as “full-time family companions” to alleviate social tensions.
Universities in China, including the Communication University of China, have started promoting “flexible employment” to beautify the data. A 2023 graduate, speaking anonymously to the BBC, mentioned, “In the past, everyone relied on campus recruitment or spring and autumn recruitment to find jobs. When I graduated, I didn’t have a job. My counselor advised me to open a Douyin account and write ‘flexible employment’ in my ‘graduate destination.’ Look, just by having an account, I became employed, even without a salary.” In the two years since graduation, she has changed jobs twice, but neither satisfied her, thus remaining unemployed.
The employment crisis has not only affected entry-level positions and regular university students but has also impacted Ph.D. graduates from top universities. A 30-year-old female Ph.D. graduate in humanities from Zhejiang University, known as “Natural Curly Curl” on social media, recently shared a video discussing her inability to find a job which quickly went viral. She expressed, “I have absolutely no job at all. I really want to ask, who is saying that ‘graduates from 985 Project universities will definitely find good jobs’?”