BlueSky Thinking Summary

The article points to a punitive trend: youth unemployment in China is seated at a record 20.4 percent in April, and just about before another 11.6 million graduates are due to enter a strained job market.

The conditions for reducing youth unemployment are yet to improve despite the lifted pandemic-related curbs.

This misfit is as a result of the mismatch, whereby young graduate job seekers salivate over huge wages while employers tend to give relatively lower salaries.

Worse still is the rising cost of living, especially in mega-cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

Moving to smaller cities, unlike some Western countries that may suggest, is not an option here since inferior living conditions are rightly linked with relatively bad quality.

Many graduates rely on parental support, and thus search for low-paying jobs becomes disincentivized.

The article therefore warns that more generalized economic and social repercussions can be triggered by youth unemployment if prolonged, stressing the immediate requirement for Chinese policy thinkers to create more high-paying jobs to sustain an aging population and support continuous economic growth.