China’s Army of Graduates Struggles for Jobs By Andrew Jacobs December 11, 2010 –

BEIJING — Liu Yang, a coal miner’s system. “For many young graduates, it’s all daughter, arrived in the capital this past about survival. If there was ever an economic summer with a freshly printed diploma from crisis, they could be a source of instability.” Datong University, $140 in her wallet and an In a kind of cruel reversal, ’s old migrant air of invincibility. class — uneducated villagers who flocked to Her first taste of reality came later the same factory towns to make goods for export — are day, as she lugged her bags through a now in high demand, with spot labor shortages ramshackle neighborhood, not far from the and tighter government oversight driving up Olympic Village, where tens of thousands of blue-collar wages. other young strivers cram four to a room. But the supply of those trained in accounting, Unable to find a bed and unimpressed by the finance and computer programming now rabbit warren of slapdash buildings, Ms. Liu seems limitless, and their value has plunged. scowled as the smell of trash wafted up around Between 2003 and 2009, the average starting her. “ isn’t like this in the movies,” she salary for migrant laborers grew by nearly 80 said. percent; during the same period, starting pay for college graduates stayed the same, Often the first from their families to finish although their wages actually decreased if even high school, ambitious graduates like inflation is taken into account. Ms. Liu are part of an unprecedented wave of young people all around China who were Chinese sociologists have come up with a new supposed to move the country’s labor- term for educated young people who move in dependent economy toward a white-collar search of work like Ms. Liu: the ant tribe. It is future. In 1998, when Jiang Zemin, then the a reference to their immense numbers — at president, announced plans to bolster higher least 100,000 in Beijing alone — and to the , Chinese universities and colleges fact that they often settle into crowded produced 830,000 graduates a year. Last May, neighborhoods, toiling for wages that would that number was more than six million and give even low-paid factory workers pause. rising. “Like ants, they gather in colonies, sometimes It is a remarkable achievement, yet for a underground in basements, and work long and government fixated on stability such figures hard,” said Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociology are also a cause for concern. The economy, at Renmin University in Beijing. despite its robust growth, does not generate The central government, well aware of the enough good professional jobs to absorb the risks of inequitable growth, has been trying to influx of highly educated young adults. And channel more development to inland provinces many of them bear the inflated expectations of like Shanxi, Ms. Liu’s home province, where their parents, who emptied their bank accounts the dismantling of state-owned industries a to buy them the good life that a higher decade ago left a string of anemic cities. education is presumed to guarantee. Despite government efforts, urban residents “College essentially provided them with earned on average 3.3 times more last year nothing,” said Zhang Ming, a political than those living in the countryside. Such scientist and vocal critic of China’s education 2 disparities — and the lure of spectacular Given the glut of underemployed graduates, wealth in coastal cities like Shanghai, Tianjin Mr. Peng suggested that young people either and Shenzhen — keep young graduates shift to more practical vocations like nursing coming. and teaching or recalibrated their expectations. “It’s O.K. if they want to try a few years “Compared with Beijing, my hometown in seeking their fortune, but if they stay too long Shanxi feels like it’s stuck in the 1950s,” said in places like Beijing or Shanghai, they will Li Xudong, 25, one of Ms. Liu’s classmates, find trouble for themselves and trouble for whose father is a vegetable peddler. “If I society,” he said. stayed there, my life would be empty and depressing.” A fellow Datong University graduate, Yuan Lei, threw the first wet blanket over the While some recent graduates find success, exuberance of Ms. Liu, Mr. Li and three many are worn down by a gauntlet of friends not long after their July arrival in challenges and disappointments. Living Beijing. Mr. Yuan had arrived several months conditions can be Dickensian, and grueling earlier for an internship but was still jobless. six-day work weeks leave little time for anything else but sleeping, eating and doing “If you’re not the son of an official or you the laundry. don’t come from money, life is going to be bitter,” he told them over bowls of 90-cent But what many new arrivals find more noodles, their first meal in the capital. discomfiting are the obstacles that hard work alone cannot overcome. Their undergraduate As the light faded and the streets became thick degrees, many from the growing crop of third- with young receptionists, cashiers and sales tier provincial schools, earn them little respect clerks heading home, Mr. Yuan led his friends in the big city. And as the children of down a dank alley and up an unsteady or factory workers, they lack the essential staircase to his room. It was about the width of social lubricant known as , or personal a queen-size bed, and he shared a filthy toilet connections, that greases the way for the with dozens of other tenants and a common offspring of China’s and the area with a communal hot plate. politically connected. Mr. Li smiled as he took in the scene. Like Emerging from the sheltered adolescence of most young Chinese, his life until that moment one-child families, they quickly bump up had been coddled, chaperoned and intensely against the bureaucracy of population regimented. “I’m ready to go out into the management, known as the hukou system, world and test myself,” he said. which denies migrants the subsidized housing The next five months would provide more of a and other health and benefits enjoyed test than he or the others had expected. For by legally registered residents. weeks Mr. Li elbowed his way through Add to this a demographic tide that has crowded job fairs but came away empty- increased the ranks of China’s 20-to-25-year- handed. His finance degree, recruiters told olds to 123 million, about 17 million more him, was useless because he was a “waidi than there were just four years ago. ren,” an outsider, who could not be trusted to handle cash and company secrets. “China has really improved the quality of its work force, but on the other hand competition When he finally found a job selling apartments has never been more serious,” said Peng for a real estate agency, he left after less than a Xizhe, dean of Social Development and Public week when his employer reneged on a Policy at Fudan University in Shanghai.

3 promised salary and then fined him each day Mr. Li worried aloud whether he would be he failed to bring in potential clients. able to marry his high school sweetheart, who had accompanied him here, if he could not In the end, Mr. Li and his friends settled for earn enough money to buy a home. Such sales jobs with an instant noodle company. concerns are rampant among young Chinese The starting salary, a low $180 a month, men, who have been squeezed by skyrocketing turned out to be partly contingent on meeting real estate prices and a culture that demands ambitious sales figures. Wearing purple golf that a groom provide an apartment for his shirts with the words “Lao Yun Pickled bride. “I’m giving myself two years,” he said, Vegetable Beef Noodles,” they worked 12- his voice trailing off. hour days, returning home after dark to a meal of instant noodles. By November, the pressure had taken its toll on two of the others, including the “This isn’t what I want to be doing, but at least irrepressible Liu Yang. After quitting the I have a job,” said Mr. Li, sitting in his room noodle company and finding no other job, she one October evening. Decorated with origami gave up and returned home. birds left by a previous occupant, the room faced a neighbor’s less than two feet across an That left Mr. Yuan, Mr. Li and their airshaft. The only personal touch was an girlfriends. Over dinner one night, the four of instant noodle poster taped over the front door them complained about the unkindness of for privacy. Beijingers, the high cost of living and the boredom of their jobs. Still, they all vowed to Because he had sold only 800 cases of noodles stick it out. that month, 200 short of his sales target, Mr. Li’s paltry salary was taking a hit. And citing “Now that I see what the outside world is like, the arrival of winter, “peak noodle-eating my only regret is that I didn’t have more fun season,” his boss had just doubled sales in college,” Mr. Yuan said. quotas.