China Grapples with Youth Unemployment... Launches Nationwide University Graduate Recruitment Campaign

Recruitment Drive Targeting State-Owned and Tech Companies

To address the youth employment crisis, Chinese authorities have launched an initiative urging state-owned enterprises and major private tech companies to expand their recruitment of university graduates.

Job fair held in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, China in 2025. Photo by Xinhua News Agency

On June 6, local media including Guangming Daily reported that eight government agencies, such as the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, recently issued a notice announcing the launch of a "National Recruitment Campaign" (Guopin Xingdong).

This campaign, which runs from May to December, aims to promote employment among this year's university graduates as well as unemployed youth who graduated between 2024 and 2025. Authorities explained that through the "National Recruitment Campaign," they will emphasize the leading role of state-owned enterprises in hiring, as well as the stabilizing role of private companies, to stabilize and expand overall employment, thereby facilitating high-quality and sufficient employment for "key groups," including university graduates.

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) in Hong Kong noted, "This measure coincides with a series of rare employment promotion policies recently introduced by Chinese authorities targeting the private tech sector." Previously, the authorities instructed local employment agencies to actively identify hiring needs at major internet companies and to expand job opportunities for young jobseekers and university graduates.

China’s high youth unemployment rate has become a chronic social problem in recent years. In June 2023, when the youth unemployment rate soared to a record high of 21.3%, China abruptly stopped releasing the statistics. Instead, starting in December of the same year, it began publishing the "urban surveyed unemployment rate for those aged 16–24, excluding students," which omits current middle and high school and university students from the data.

According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, as of October, the urban unemployment rate among youth aged 16 to 24 was 17.3%. While this marked a slight decrease from the previous month, it still remains at a high level. In August of the same year, the youth unemployment rate rose to 18.9%, setting a new record since the announcement began. On top of this, it is expected that about 12.7 million students will graduate from university in China this year—an all-time high that surpasses last year’s figure of 12.22 million.

Last month, more than 700 people reportedly applied to a shepherd job posting at a ranch in Xilin Gol, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Analysts believe this reflects young people, exhausted by the intensifying job market and excessive competition, responding to alternative employment opportunities. Applicants included a wide range of individuals, from recent university graduates to white-collar workers and factory laborers.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.