Even with a job in China, 'Meager Salary'... Average Monthly Pay for College Graduates is 1.06 Million Won

Slower Increase After COVID-19 Spread
More Going to Graduate School Instead of Employment

As China's employment difficulties deepen, the rate of increase in starting salaries for university graduates has sharply slowed. With China's economy hit by the spread of COVID-19, even those who have struggled to secure jobs after graduating from university are increasingly likely to face financial hardships.

On the 14th, Chinese economic media Caixin analyzed the '2023 Employment Bluebook' released by Mycos Research Institute, reporting that the average monthly income of university undergraduate graduates last year was 5,990 yuan (approximately 1,063,105 KRW). Graduates from vocational schools earned less, with an average of 4,595 yuan. Specifically, 57.7% of university undergraduate graduates had starting salaries (monthly basis) below 6,000 yuan, while the proportion for vocational college graduates reached 82.1%.

The wages of newcomers to the workforce appear to have been directly hit by the economic slowdown caused by the spread of COVID-19. The average monthly income for undergraduate graduates was 5,135 yuan in 2018, 5,440 yuan in 2019, 5,471 yuan in 2020, and 5,833 yuan in 2021. The growth rate, which was 5.9% in 2019, sharply dropped to 0.5% in 2020 immediately after the COVID-19 outbreak, improved to 6.6% in 2021, but fell again to 2.7% last year.

Certain industries such as Information Technology (IT) and transportation recorded higher-than-average monthly incomes. The information security sector (7,579 yuan) saw a 19% surge in starting salaries compared to five years ago. On the other hand, the French language field, the only humanities and social sciences discipline that ranked in the top 10 high-paying sectors five years ago, lost competitiveness and fell out of the top 10. Based on vocational schools, the highest monthly income was in the railway engineering technology field (5,781 yuan).

Not only is the wage increase rate slowing down, but the difficulty of finding employment itself is making China's economic outlook even bleaker. The proportion of 2022 undergraduate graduates employed by private enterprises last year was 51%, down 3 percentage points from 54% in 2019.

Meanwhile, part-time jobs (flexible employment), which are short-term positions, have become a new employment trend. It was reported that 4.6% of undergraduate students and 8.6% of vocational college students in 2022 found jobs in the form of part-time work. Among them, 10.6% of students majoring in arts were engaged in part-time jobs, meaning one out of ten students worked part-time. The education sector absorbed 27% of undergraduates and 10% of vocational school students.

However, their job satisfaction is not high, raising the possibility of becoming a social issue. The Bluebook added, "The quality of flexible employment still has much room for improvement," and emphasized that "corresponding guarantee systems and policy support are necessary."

Despite the employment difficulties, the popularity of graduate schools continues. Last year, the proportion of graduate students in China was 17.9% of undergraduates, up 3.2 percentage points from 14.7% in 2018. The proportion of freshmen undergraduates who responded that they would not plan to seek employment in order to prepare for domestic graduate school entrance exams increased from 2.8% in 2018 to 6.7% in 2022.

Meanwhile, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, China's youth (aged 16?24) unemployment rate reached a record high of 20.4% in April. This is the first time it has exceeded 20%, meaning that more than one in five young people are unemployed.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.