China's rising youth unemployment: Part 2
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 796 Ratings
🗓️ 15 August 2023
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The country is not just facing record-high levels of youth unemployment - more than 20% of 16-24 year olds in urban areas at the latest count.
It is also facing growing discontent among many young people about the type of work they can find, often involving long hours, no overtime pay, and insecure contracts.
It is prompting some to opt out of the rat race altogether. And many experts think the current problems aren't just prompted by the global slowdown. They're structural.
Even the government's economic advisors think it may be time for a new economic plan if China is to avoid years of stagnation.
That change could slow and painful though. Will Xi Jinping and the country's other Communist Party leaders go for it?
Produced and presented by Ed Butler.
(Image: College students choose jobs at a job fair for 2023 graduates in Huai 'an City, East China's Jiangsu Province. 01/07/23. Photo credit: CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Image)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Hannah and I'm very excited to be hosting What in the World a new daily podcast from the BBC World Service, where we try to help you make sense of the world around you, of the big things that are happening, the small things that are happening and everything in between. Search for What in the World, wherever you get your BBC podcasts, and hit subscribe. |
| 0:23.7 | Hi there, I'm Ed Butler. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Today, in the second of our |
| 0:29.5 | programmes about China's latest economic challenges, we're hearing from young workers who say |
| 0:35.2 | the jobs they're having to do just aren't worth it. |
| 0:39.5 | Waking up early every day, going to work, doing repetitive tasks and earning only a meagre salary, |
| 0:45.9 | it was so pitiful. Why do people live like this? |
| 0:49.3 | Why are so many giving up, even as China's unemployment rate is rising? |
| 0:54.1 | And why might this economic crisis |
| 0:56.7 | be tougher for the communist authorities than some of those in the past? You'd have to redistribute |
| 1:02.6 | income and wealth from basically the state sector to the private sector. That's not really what |
| 1:09.1 | the leadership in China is very comfortable with. |
| 1:12.4 | Changing the economic recipe, Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:18.3 | I applied like 50 jobs and like four, they asked me to do interviews with them and they'll ask me to work over time. |
| 1:30.8 | This is Zershi. He's a recent Chinese graduate with an American master's degree and overseas |
| 1:36.5 | work experience to boot. He's come back to his hometown, Chongqing, to look for a job as a |
| 1:42.0 | game developer. With his background and fluent English skills, |
| 1:46.1 | you'd reckon that employers would be flocking to sign him up. |
| 1:49.6 | But it doesn't look that way. |
| 1:51.9 | The first thing that will tell me is that I have to work six days a week |
| 1:57.5 | and basically like around 12 hours every day, they would not pay me extra for that. |
| 2:05.2 | So hang on, they were telling you up front that that was just going to be what you had to do. |
| 2:11.1 | Yeah. Once they know that I'm a recent graduate, it's like they are giving you the opportunity to work for them. |
... |
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