In September 2025, a large-scale job fair in Heilongjiang Province attracted over 110,000 graduates competing for more than 9,000 positions, highlighting the challenges young people face in finding employment. Experts analyzed that the expansion of higher education has led to the devaluation of degrees, and the difficulty in industrial transformation to meet the demands of job seekers, turning job fairs into local political shows. Youth unemployment has become a pressing issue affecting social stability.
On September 15, China Heilongjiang University held a “Graduate Recruitment Fair.” According to official data, participating companies provided over 9,000 positions, attracting 112,423 graduates at the venue. The overwhelming crowd extended all the way to the subway station.
A video from an attendee circulated online, stating: “There are so many recent graduates on-site, really feeling the seriousness of the current job market.” Many companies and universities were found to require master’s or even doctoral degrees for positions, leaving few opportunities for undergraduates, indicating diminishing job prospects.
The job fair sparked heated discussions online with descriptions such as “swarms of graduates like locusts” passing through and lamentations about fierce job competition.
One standout case from the job fair was a Jinzhou group looking for a secretary, requiring a master’s degree from a prestigious university, offering a monthly salary of only 3,500 yuan with just one position available. Ironically, this position was seen as a “high-quality opportunity” by job seekers.
A World Bank report released in June 2025 indicated that while China’s GDP supposedly grew at an average annual rate of about 4.9% from 2020 to 2024, urban employment only increased by 0.9% annually, showing a growing disconnect between economic growth and job creation.
Data from China’s Ministry of Education revealed a continuous increase in the number of graduates: 11.79 million in 2024 and exceeding 12.22 million in 2025.
Youth unemployment rates are similarly alarming. In June 2023, the urban youth unemployment rate for those aged 16 to 24 in mainland China reached 21.3%, a record high. Official data was temporarily halted after that, only resuming in December of the same year with adjusted calculation methods excluding active students. Despite this, the youth unemployment rate in August 2025 remained high at 18.9%, another yearly high.
Graduates participating in job fairs commonly reflected that educational requirements are increasing annually while job opportunities are decreasing. Ironically, many university graduates are ending up in low-level positions.
A blogger, who is a university graduate, shared on a video: “Finding a job this year is not just difficult, it has become completely topsy-turvy. Nowadays, there are more young, fresh faces working in drink shops, supermarkets, and even as food delivery drivers.”
Another blogger mentioned the situation in their hometown: around 80% of university graduates struggle to find stable employment. They described a heartbreaking story of a relative’s son, the first undergraduate in the village, celebrating his university acceptance, only to end up cutting cabbages in the fields due to job scarcity, earning a meager income and leaving his hands wounded.
These young people are the first generation in their village to receive a higher education but find themselves facing harsh realities.
A US-based economist, Davy J. Wong, pointed out that China’s current employment crisis is not due to students choosing the wrong majors or lack of effort but rather due to a “mismatch in the political system.”
Since the expansion of university admissions in 1998, higher education has rapidly increased in scale. Wong described universities as turning into “diploma factories,” with each year’s graduates setting new records, completely disconnected from industry demands.
He highlighted the shift from higher education being elite and prestigious, representing social status and ability, to becoming mass-produced and losing its exclusivity.
This has led to a vicious cycle of “degree inversion,” where many doctoral and master’s degree holders are forced to compete for positions that traditionally belonged to undergraduates or vocational school graduates.
A video compilation from a social media account recently showed a segment where a female undergraduate blogger, now working at a garment factory for six months, lamented, “I’ve been working as a laborer; I just happened to spend a few years in school.”
She disclosed that at school job fairs, most positions were in sales and insurance, requiring no specialized skills, just the ability to make sales. Many of her peers switched to livestreaming careers, almost forgetting their original majors. She mentioned her cousin’s struggle to find a job, even being asked for a college diploma when applying to work at a bubble tea shop.
Another recent graduate’s experience is more representative. Despite majoring in new energy engineering, he couldn’t find a relevant position, and now works as a food delivery driver in Shanghai. He works 10 hours a day, completing around 40 orders, earning about 380 yuan per day with a monthly income exceeding 10,000 yuan. However, he admitted that the job takes a toll on him, with red lights on the road becoming a blur, feeling like he is “suffering” in the big city, experiencing a significant disparity.
The mismatch between education and the job market forces many well-educated young people to struggle in basic labor roles.
Political commentator Xu Zhen revealed to reporters that large-scale job fairs are essentially a “political show” orchestrated by local governments. Companies are pressured to participate and create openings even when not needed, all for the sake of a show under pressure.
These “shows” follow a familiar routine, hiring on probation for three months and then laying off employees. By doing so, the employment rate for undergraduates, originally around 10%, and for postgraduates, over 30%, can be made to look twice as good. However, this approach only serves as a short-term stabilizing tactic and does not address the fundamental issues.
Similarly, the hard indicators of employment quality—such as the contract signing rate, regularization rate, job retention, and social insurance coverage—are entirely absent from official data. This, according to Wong, is more of a political performance for local governments to accumulate political capital.
In reality, many companies may hire graduates but end up “optimizing” (laying off) them after six months, only to later invite them to job fairs the following year in a cycle of “recruitment-probation-layoff-rehire” annually. This short-term approach fails to solve the employment crisis and instead exacerbates graduates’ feelings of instability.
Wong added that with declining industrial bases in local areas and severe homogenization in industries, the job market lacks comprehensive industry support, leading large-scale job fairs to become mere “political shows” focusing on appearances rather than transparency and long-term planning.
He emphasized, “Having many job positions available does not guarantee actual job opportunities with quality and security.”
Xu Zhen analyzed that the solution to over 80% of China’s employment issues was rooted in private enterprises. State-owned enterprises could only absorb 15% to 20% at most. However, since 2015, the “state advances, private retreats” trend has become more pronounced with banks retracting loans, numerous private enterprises closing down, as well as local government debt policies and aggressive cross-regional crackdowns stifling business development, leading to a collapse in private investment confidence. He bluntly stated, “Private enterprises losing confidence means they no longer invest, causing the employment pool to dry up.”
Moreover, China’s economy is amidst a transition period. Xu Zhen argued that the traditional economic models relying on real estate and heavy industries are declining, and the new digital economy model has yet to reach a significant scale. Crucially, the core of the digital economy aims at “increased efficiency and reduced labor costs” rather than creating more jobs.
With over 10 million graduates entering the market yearly and the shrinking capacity of the economy to absorb them, Xu Zhen forecasted a bleak future. He believed that the Communist Party might struggle with this issue.
He warned, “The unemployed graduates’ crisis is not cyclical; it’s structural. What’s more alarming is the high political sensitivity of this wave of unemployment.”
He suggested that “Chinese society is sitting on a volcano.” A large-scale youth unemployment crisis coupled with an unexpected event could potentially escalate into protests. He referenced the “Arab Spring” revolution in 2011, where university students and the unemployed played prominent roles.
While the CCP’s social control and indoctrination mechanisms might delay an outbreak, the seeds of crisis have been sown.
Simultaneously, the individual choices of Chinese graduates reflect the oppressive employment situation. A young blogger, working in a factory for six months, lamented, “Stop saying that graduates can’t find jobs because they refuse to take off ‘Kong Yiji’s long gown’ – we’ve long discarded those gowns!”
These voices not only depict the harsh reality but also serve as evidence of systemic challenges. China’s employment problem is no longer just an economic issue; it also pertains to social stability and the legitimacy of authority—a “grey rhino” (predictable significant crisis) that the Communist Party acknowledges is severe but struggles to provide solutions.