BEIJING: Rising unemployment in China is pushing millions of college graduates into a tough bargain, with some forced to accept low-paying work or even subsist on their parents’ pensions, a plight that has created a new working class of “rotten-tail kids”.
The phrase has become a social media buzzword this year, drawing parallels to the catchword “rotten-tail buildings” for the tens of millions of unfinished homes that have plagued China’s economy since 2021.
A record number of college graduates this year are hunting for jobs in a labour market depressed by COVID-19-induced disruptions as well as regulatory crack-downs on the country’s finance, tech and education sectors.
The jobless rate for the roughly 100 million Chinese youth aged 16-24 crept above 20 per cent for the first time in April last year. When it hit an all-time high of 21.3 per cent in June 2023, officials abruptly suspended the data series to reassess how numbers were compiled.
One year on, youth unemployment remains a headache, with the reconfigured jobless rate spiking to a 2024 high of 17.1 per cent in July, as 11.79 million college students graduated this summer in an economy still weighed down by its real estate crisis.
President Xi Jinping has repeatedly stressed that finding jobs for young people remains a top priority. The government has called for more channels for the youth to access potential employers, such as job fairs, and has rolled out supportive business policies to help boost hiring.
“For many Chinese college graduates, better job prospects, upward social mobility, a sunnier life outlook – all things once promised by a college degree – have increasingly become elusive,” said Yun Zhou, assistant professor of sociology, University of Michigan.
Some jobless young people have returned to their hometown to be “full-time children”, relying on their parents’ retirement pensions and savings.
Even those with post-graduate degrees haven’t been spared.
After spending years climbing China’s ultra-competitive academic ladder, “rotten-tail kids” are discovering that their qualifications are failing to secure them jobs in a bleak economy.
Their options are limited. Either they cut their expectations for top-paying jobs or find any job to make ends meet. Some have also turned to crime.
