A report earlier released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) said earnings of graduates were now at par and even lower than those of migrant laborers.
China’s official unemployment rate stands at about 4%. Yet a large group of laborers — the communist state’s 150 million migrant laborers or floating population, as they are sometimes termed here — is not taken into account when unemployment figures are calculated.
The situation with graduates is critical.
Some 6.1 million graduates entered the job market this summer, 540,000 more than last year. In 2008 the employment rate for graduates was less than 70%.
This year nearly two million of graduates, many of them postgraduate diploma holders, are expected to be left without job placements.
Asia Times Online reported that, in its "Green Book of Population and Labor 2009" published last month, the CASS said the lack of trained and skilled workers as opposed to the surging numbers of graduates has led to the emergence of an abnormal trend where graduates are paid the same or even less than migrant laborers.