On November 8, the Ministry of Labor and Social Security and the National Development and Reform Commission jointly launched a study on labor and social security development for the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10). This is the first long-term outline on employment and social security by the government and its focus is measures to relieve unemployment pressures in the country.

An important goal is to keep the registered unemployment rate of township and city residents below 5 percent. According to the study, by the end of 2005, the unemployment rate stood at 4.2 percent while the figure in 2000 was only 3.1 percent.

The study predicts that Chinese towns and cities will have new supply of labor of 50 million people by 2010. Meanwhile, there will only be 40 million new job vacancies, which leaves 10 million out of employment.

A report in the China Economic Times says the population engaged in agriculture will be reduced to 700 million by 2010, which means almost 200 million farmers have to move to towns or cities in search of a job. The employment situation looks worse when laid-off workers from state-owned enterprises and ex-servicemen are taken into account.

A recent survey by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences shows that among the issues of top concern for city residents in 2005 were the yawning wealth gap, financial risks and unemployment.

Losing shine

Luo Feng, a 40-year-old, has been out of a job for one year now and describes his situation as desperate.

Besides an MBA degree from Napier University in Scotland in 2002, Luo has rich work experience gained in multinational companies. His resume shows he has served as assistant general manager and deputy sales manager at a large German company.

Luo's friends told him he would never have to go jobless. Only several years ago, the fact of an overseas study stint was almost guaranteed to land one with a handsome pay in a big company.

Yet Luo Feng is jobless-and he is not alone.

Recently, the Chinese Ministry of Labor and Social Security released a report that showed the number of jobhunters with a Bachelor's degree and above was growing steadily. According to a recent survey by Beijing-based World Human Resources Lab (WHRL) covering 1,500 jobhunters with overseas study experience, more than 35 percent found it difficult to find a job. Another WHRL survey at the end of 2004 showed that only 58 percent of jobhunters who had studied abroad found employment within six months after their return to China.

Luo Feng has been counting on friends and posting his resume online in his job hunt. He believes that for a person with his qualifications and experience, headhunters should be knocking on his doors rather than him crowding into job fairs.

"Maybe my resume is too shiny and the companies I worked for are big names, which scares people away," he said. He is now trying to "dumb down'' his resume.

But Luo has also been restricting his choices by leaving out Chinese private companies as prospective employers. His argument is that his Western education has shaped him perfectly for positions in a multinational company. He thinks he will be a misfit in a homegrown Chinese company.

Management graduates from foreign universities returned to China in droves between 2001 and 2004. A large majority of them had no work experience or knowledge of local markets. They tried to plant borrowed models on local companies and their failures dealt a severe blow to the reputation of overseas MBA graduates in China.

"This stereotyping has also greatly inhibited my job-hunting," Luo Feng told Beijing Review.

Shao Wei is deputy director of the China Scholarship Council and Chinese Service Center for Scholarly Exchange directly under the Ministry of Education. He identified a new trend in Chinese graduates returning home from abroad: the total number is climbing steadily and a rising proportion of them are Master's degree holders in management and economics.

Lucrative positions for these majors are relatively limited as Chinese universities are also producing a large number of graduates in these majors. In the fierce competition between overseas-trained talents and home-trained talents, the latter group usually has the upper hand as it is prepared to accept a lower salary owing to relatively lower educational expenses.

"Even if finding a job is difficult, I will not become a salesman," said Luo Feng. "I am too old for that."