By Clement Tan | May 30, 2023 | CNBC.com
As youth unemployment in China rises to a record high, college graduates are caught in a perfect storm — with some forced to take on low-paying jobs or settle for jobs below their skill levels.
Official data shows urban unemployment among the 16- to 24-year-olds in China hit a record 20.4% in April – about four times the broader unemployment rate even as millions more college students are expected to graduate this year.
“This college bubble is finally bursting,” said Yao Lu, a professor of sociology at Columbia University in New York. “The expansion of college education in the late 1990s created this huge influx of college graduates, but there is a misalignment between demand and supply of high skilled workers. The economy hasn’t caught up.”
The scourge of underemployment is another issue that Chinese youths and policymakers have to grapple with.
In a paper Lu co-authored with Xiaogang Li, a professor at Xi’an Jiaotong University, the professors estimated at least another quarter of college graduates in China are underemployed, on top of the rising youth unemployment rate.
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