BEIJING (Reuters) - Rising unemployment in China is pushing millions of college graduates into a tough bargain, with some forced to accept low-paying work or even subsist on their parents’ pensions, a plight that has created a new working class of “rotten-tail kids”.
The phrase has become a social media buzzword this year, drawing parallels to the catchword “rotten-tail buildings” for the tens of millions of unfinished homes that have plagued China’s economy since 2021.
A record number of college graduates this year are hunting for jobs in a labour market depressed by COVID-19-induced disruptions as well as regulatory crack-downs on the country’s finance, tech and education sectors.
The jobless rate for the roughly 100 million Chinese youth aged 16-24 crept above 20% for the first time in April last year. When it hit an all-time high of 21.3% in June 2023, officials abruptly suspended the data series to reassess how numbers were compiled.
What’s there to spin? Youth unemployment is a problem many countries struggle with. China isn’t exactly unique in that regard. According the world bank, China’s youth unemployment is rather unremarkable and is actually lower than many European countries.
Edit: a link to the world bank which was already cited but hard for some people to find https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.1524.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=true