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By Li Hongmei (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-02-04 15:27

Milling about empty recruiting booths at a deserted job fair on a freezing weekday morning in West Beijing, Lu Jing, a 24-year-old job seeker fresh from a college in Hubei Province and hoping to be a fashion designer one day, might again leave empty handed. But she was not so discouraged, ‘I don’t expect to find a job soon, but I’ll keep looking till I do.’

Hiring freezes are spreading with the deepening economic downtrend—some 65 percent of businesses in the Pearl River Delta, an economic hot spot, don’t plan to recruit graduates this year, according to a survey conducted last month by the Kingfield Management headhunting service. And some 6.1 million grads are expected to flood the job market this year, joining the 27 percent of last year’s diploma-holders who still haven’t found work.

Confronted by global recession, the prospect of finding a decent job for most grads seems gloomy. Domestically, the unevenly-distributed economic resources further exacerbate the situation; and many more of the grads are flocking to megacities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, or the economically booming cities on the country’s eastern seaboard.

But there exists a mismatch between expectations and realities. Even these megacities can’t furnish enough of the gleaming white-collar jobs that graduates want. China’s export-driven economy deals mainly in manufacturing and processing, which require low-skilled workers; while the white-collar end of the production process—design and sales—mostly takes place overseas.

The government is stepping up efforts in the hope of keeping urban unemployment to 4.6 percent this year. Measures announced Jan.7 sought to spruce up alternative paths in a bid to create employment for graduates. One offered subsidies and loan forgiveness to graduates who are ready to work for a few years in China’s less-developed western provinces.

But the carrot dangling before eyes fails to tempt many graduates who consider it a clash of their job preferences. Needless to say, they prefer ‘elite jobs,’ as do their parents who exert ever more hope and strain on the only-child generation born in a booming China. Topping the list of employment preferences are government jobs, which pay modestly but offer benefits and security. In 2008, some 750,000 students took the civil service exam, but only 2 percent could expect slots.  

Following are big companies, which pay well and provide better training, though less stable than the civil service. But hit by the sweeping financial storms, the once-galloping economic entities are also bogged down into a slump, many already starting personnel cutbacks instead of recruitments.

Starting their own business, as encouraged by state policies, sounds good but elusive to the majority of Chinese graduates, who are so far rewarded for high scores on established exams and good at book learning, not for risk-taking and creativity, and therefore have little appetite for entrepreneurship.

College enrollment has been rapidly expanded since 1990s, producing the surge and even oversupply of graduates, which is delivering a severe test to employment market in the world’s most populous country. Despite the bottleneck from college to cubicle, the government has no intention to choke off college expansion. Considering the large population base, even today only 6 percent of the Chinese population holds college degrees.

‘Talent is the wealth of the country,’ says Professor Wang Jiaxiang at Beijing Foreign Studies University. ‘If China wants to develop further, it must raise its education level.’

Facing the bleakness of job market, many young hopefuls have to lower their expectations, as a Peking University senior was cited as saying, ‘ I’ll find a job first, it’s better than nothing.’

Albeit the specter of unemployment is hovering over campus, today’s youths enjoy the freedom in choosing their careers, which signals a social progress. More over, the Chinese youths today seem more mature than ever to embrace the added risks and reward. Some even pin their preferences to the sense of ‘being needed.’

‘I intend to go to where I’ll be needed,’ says Wang Jichun, a senior of a normal university in Beijing.