Chinas College Grads Struggle to Find Jobs as Youth Unemployment Rate Hits 11-Month High

As China’s official youth unemployment rate ‌in July hit an 11-month high, experts and young Chinese who spoke with The Epoch Times said that the real number could be higher and the reality of the job market is likely much worse.China’s urban unemployment rate for youths ‌in July, excluding enrolled students, rose to 17.9 percent, according to data released by the communist regime’s National Bureau of Statistics on Aug. 19. It increased from 14.9 percent in June and is the worst reading since August 2025.Taiwanese economist Edward Huang said the actual situation is likely worse, “as the official employment figures include many short-term and temporary workers.”“International estimates generally place China’s youth unemployment rate at over 20 percent,” he told The Epoch Times.“The rise in the unemployment rate stems primarily from China’s slowing economic growth; even the official figure hit the lowest in decades.”China has set its lowest economic growth target in decades for this year, at 4.5 to 5 percent, the lowest since 1991.“A second factor is the decline of domestic demand-driven sectors, especially real estate, meaning the major pillars supporting the economy are faltering,” Huang said. “Meanwhile, the export sector is grappling with cutthroat price competition. Consequently, when businesses look to cut costs, hiring young people is the first thing they forgo.”Xu Zhen, a senior professional in China’s capital market, also said that the actual youth unemployment rate is likely higher than 17.9 percent.“According to the prevailing view among various institutions, it is no exaggeration to say that the true youth unemployment rate exceeds 20 percent,” he told The Epoch Times.“The Chinese regime embellishes youth unemployment figures by manipulating the calculation, specifically by inflating the denominator while deflating the numerator.”This is achieved through adjustments to statistical criteria, Xu said.“The youth unemployment rate covers only the urban labor force actively seeking work. Underemployment, low-wage jobs, and positions lacking benefits are classified as employment,” he said. “Large numbers of young people who have not been actively looking for jobs, rely on their parents for support, or prolong their student status by preparing for postgraduate entrance exams are excluded from unemployment figures, and rural hidden unemployment falls outside the scope of the statistics.”The number of workers engaged in “flexible employment” in China stood at 280 million in 2025 and is projected to reach 320 million in 2026, accounting for more than 40 percent of urban employment, according to a report released in June by the China New Employment Forms Research Center, a Beijing-based research firm.College Graduates Can’t Find Jobs The number of university graduates in China is projected to reach 12.7 million this year—an increase of 480,000 over last year. A vast number of young people are flooding the job market, only to face the reality that finding employment is becoming increasingly difficult.The Epoch Times spoke with graduates and family members who requested anonymity or used pseudonyms out of fear of reprisal.Dongdong, a recent computer science graduate in China who used a pseudonym, said he has been unable to find a job. He told The Epoch Times that he believes the youth unemployment rate is fabricated.“The employment rates are all faked. Major universities completely falsify their figures, and the level of fabrication at many schools is severe,” he said.Gui Ke, a college graduate from Yulin in Guangxi Province who also used a pseudonym, told The Epoch Times that he has also been unable to find employment.He said that entry-level urban jobs typically offer a base salary of only 2,000 to 3,000 yuan (about $298 to $446), and many positions require experience—meaning those without it, such as new graduates, are often rejected. He feels lost and finds that there are very few avenues for finding employment.“Many of my classmates are also just staying at home; only one or two have jobs. Wages around here are basically two or three thousand yuan, which simply isn’t enough to cover expenses,” he said.He said he is currently relying on his parents for financial support.Yang Miao, the pseudonym of a graduate with a doctorate degree in Tianjin, told The Epoch Times that she has been looking for a job for six months without success.“It’s because I don’t have experience,” the graduate said.A parent of a female college graduate in Shenzhen, who requested anonymity, told The Epoch Times: “My daughter hasn’t found a job yet, and I’m so anxious and depressed that I can’t sleep.“She majored in environmental design, which is not easy for her to find a job. She attended an ordinary undergraduate college that didn’t provide job placement assistance. For children from ordinary families, it’s very difficult to find a way forward, even after getting a degree.“After all the hard work put into raising a university graduate, the diploma has turned out to be nothing more than a worthless piece of paper. Now, not only can they not find a job, but they can’t even land a part-time gig. All that schooling was for nothing.”Chinese graduates crowd stalls during a job fair at Zhengzhou University in Zhengzhou, China, on March 22, 2019. Zuo Dongchen/ImaginechinaIn July 2023, Zhang Dandan, an associate professor of economics at Peking University’s National School of Development, pointed out in her research findings published in Chinese financial media outlet Caixin that if the approximately 16 million young people who are neither working nor looking for work—such as those “lying flat” or living off their parents—were counted as unemployed, the actual youth unemployment rate in China could have reached as high as 46.5 percent.“Lying flat” refers to young Chinese people’s passive resistance to the stresses of life by choosing a simple, low-cost lifestyle with minimal effort and spending and not getting married, having children, or buying properties.Official Measures Fall ShortThree Chinese ministries—Human Resources, Social Work, and Civil Affairs—jointly issued a “Notice on Optimizing Urban and Rural Community Jobs to Absorb the Employment of College Graduates” in August, requiring local governments to expand the recruitment of fresh graduates for grassroots community government positions and encourage companies to increase recruitment.Huang said that the cost of expanding government jobs to absorb new college graduates ultimately falls on the regime’s tax revenue that is derived from economic growth.“When the economy is struggling, the government’s move to pour money into expanding grassroots-level positions merely makes short-term figures look better. It offers limited substantive improvement in employment and thus yields only short-term effects. Moreover, local governments are currently facing financial difficulties, so their budgets do not actually allow for increased personnel expenditures,” he said of the measures.People attend a job fair in Beijing on Aug. 26, 2022. Jade Gao/AFP via Getty ImagesChina’s mounting total government debt reached roughly $18.7 trillion (around 96 trillion yuan) by the end of 2025, surpassing Europe for the first time, according to public data.Xu Zhen stated that the primary reasons for the persisting high youth unemployment rate in China remain the wave of business closures driven by the economic downturn and the surge in job losses resulting from a lack of confidence among private enterprises, “trends that show no signs of abating.”“While administrative measures to expand hiring can suppress unemployment figures in the short term, the long-term cost is a sacrifice of efficiency,” he said, recalling the “iron rice bowl” or “big pot” system of the 1980s, under which financial rewards did not depend on performance.“This approach risks dragging down the economy,” he said.Tang Bing, Luo Ya, and Gu Xiaohua contributed to this report.