China’s youth unemployment hit an all-time high in August, underlining the mounting pressure on the world’s second-largest economy as millions of university graduates struggle to find a foothold in an increasingly tight labor market, reports Caixin. The jobless rate among people aged 16 to 24, excluding full-time students, climbed to 18.9% in August, according to data released Sept. 17 by the National Bureau of Statistics. The figure—up 1.1 percentage points from July—is the highest since the agency began tracking the indicator in December 2023. The surge coincides with a record 12.22 million new graduates entering the job market this year, 430,000 more than in 2024.
The numbers point to a worsening structural imbalance in the economy. Long-reliable white-collar sectors like tech, real estate and tutoring are scaling back amid broader structural adjustments, just as an unprecedented wave of skilled talent floods the market. The mismatch is leaving many graduates in cutthroat competition for a shrinking pool of attractive roles—or pushing them to delay entering the workforce.
With annual graduate numbers expected to exceed 10 million through 2040, the trend could leave swaths of young talent on the sidelines and weigh on economic performance for years to come.