China’s youth unemployment rate has reached its highest level in 20 months, reflecting deep structural challenges in the job market that experts warn could persist for decades.
China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that the unemployment rate for 16-24 year-olds (excluding students) reached 18.9% in August, the highest since December 2023. While officials attributed this spike to graduation season, with expectations that rates will decline as graduates find employment, underlying issues suggest a more persistent problem.
The employment crisis stems from a fundamental mismatch between supply and demand. China graduated approximately 12.22 million university students in 2024, an increase of 430,000 from the previous year. This trend of over 10 million annual graduates is expected to continue until 2040, creating sustained pressure on the job market.
Traditional sectors that historically absorbed large numbers of graduates—real estate, internet platforms, private tutoring, and finance—have yet to recover their pre-pandemic hiring levels. Government crackdowns on tutoring companies through the “double reduction” policy in July 2021 particularly devastated the education sector, which has not returned to 2021 employment levels despite some recovery in non-academic training.
Recruitment data shows a 22% year-over-year decline in corporate job postings for graduates in the first half of 2024, while job seekers increased by 8%. The hardest-hit industries include internet/e-commerce, professional services, real estate, education, and utilities.
While emerging sectors like semiconductors, artificial intelligence, new materials, and renewable energy show growth, their scale remains insufficient to offset job losses in traditional industries. As researcher Mao Yufei noted, the expansion in new sectors cannot compensate for the contraction in established ones.
This employment squeeze has led more graduates to pursue advanced degrees, with top-tier universities seeing postgraduate enrollment rates jump from 68.5% in 2022 to 77.5% in 2024, while direct employment dropped from 31.5% to 22.5%.
Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), September 18, 2025
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202509180221.aspx