Prolonged internships

Yu Xiaoli graduated from the advertising department of the Inner Mongolia Agricultural University in July 2005. She has been working as an intern in an advertising company for nearly a year but is yet to receive 1 yuan in pay. But she is still reluctant to quit the job.

"It is the company's regulation that every recruit has to work on a two-month internship without salary. But the company always tries to prolong the internship on some excuse or the other. We all feel we are doing a good job and will soon be absorbed as a full-time employee," said Yu Xiaoli. She said if she quit now, she would have to start all over again in another company, which could well do the same thing.

In China's highly competitive labor market, many college graduates are in the same situation as Yu. A report on job-hunting by fresh university graduates for 2006 shows that about 100 of the 12,600 surveyed were working without any pay.

"I have worked for almost a year and still rely on my parents for my expenses. I am beginning to wonder whether I should have gone to college," said a dejected Yu.

Since the 1990s, the focus of China's employment work has been on creating job opportunities for laid-off workers and migrant workers. However, Zeng Xiangquan, Dean of the School of Labor Relations and Human Resources of Renmin University of China, thinks the focus of employment strategies is gradually shifting to the absorption of college graduates into the labor market.

The harsh reality for college graduates is that those with a job still cannot make ends meet. Fresh graduate from the Beijing Forestry University Li Heng said one needs at least 1,600 yuan per month in Beijing, including 800 yuan for rent, 500 yuan for food and 300 yuan for transportation and telephone bills. But many fresh graduates in Beijing work for less than 1,600 for the first year. They are forced to rent basement areas and eat for cheap off the street.

For a long time, sending children to university has been the only hope for poverty-stricken rural families in China. But with more and more graduates finding it difficult to get a job or in jobs with low salaries, the financial burden on these families could become unbearable.

An editorial in the Guangzhou-based Nanfang Daily City News says a series of social problems could result from jobless college graduates and could further widen the wealth divide.

Wrong focus

One reason for the rising numbers of unemployed graduates is demand-supply imbalances in China's labor market. There is an oversupply of low-level general talents and a shortage of high-end talents. In terms of geographical location, talents are crowded in cosmopolitan cities and coastal cities and they are unwilling to move to the smaller cities.

This has led to the situation where many graduates and post-graduates are jobless but many companies cannot recruit enough technicians.

According to the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, China now has 87 million technical workers, of which technicians and senior technicians are 3.6 million, accounting for only 4 percent of the total. Meanwhile, companies' demand for technicians is 14 percent of the technical pool, presenting a staggering gap of 10 percent.

China's renowned economist Liang Xiaomin attributes this imbalance to the imbalance in the deployment of educational resources.

Liang believes as one type of social resources, the distribution of educational resources should be guided by efficiency, which means training should be directed toward those talents that are most needed by society. He pointed to the explosive expansion of higher education and the shrinkage of middle-level vocational education and training as a case in point.

"China is still a developing country with limited educational resources. It is transcending its development stage by putting its resources into developing and popularizing higher education," said Liang Xiaomin.

(This is the first of the year-ender series.)