Graduated Success

India and China both face a common problem ..... they have expanded their education systems to produce 'graduates' .... numbers have risen from a few hundred thousand a year, to many, many millions.

Handing In Your CV Could Be A Struggle In China .....

All terribly exciting, but there is one massive problem ... No Jobs.

 

No labour markets (no matter how buoyant), can create enough high quality 'graduate jobs' to soak up the numbers pouring out of their educational establishments. India for example churns out five million new university graduates per annum, and China a further 7.26 million, both of which are more than the total work force of entire European countries every year.

So what do you do with millions of extra graduates?

Well some get exported to the Western economies, but increasing resistance to this, and the fact that its usually only I.T. workers (with passable English skills), means that for example in India, one in three graduates up to the age of 29 is now unemployed, while 'officially', in China graduate unemployment is around 15% (meaning over a million new Chinese graduates each year will be jobless), but 'unofficially', the real Chinese graduate unemployment rate could be closer to 30% (meaning 2.3 million unemployed graduates per annum) ... with millions more entering the employment market in the following year.

 

This has led to fears that the 'Red Emperors' very economic success, could lead to 'counter-revolutionary' tendencies amongst the growing ranks of the educated unemployed .... all while the rich just get richer. They are beginning to fear having to perform another 'Tienanmen' like crackdown, sooner rather than later and this has led to plans to turn 600 universities into polytechnics, to provide more technical and employment-related courses, rather than academic and theoretical subjects, because many factory jobs are now paying more than entry-level office positions.

China's export competitiveness has been impacted by this phenomena, as its goods have become more expensive as wage inflation impacts production costs. As for India, failure to convert its educated unemployed youth bulge in to employed assets, means the country will remain a low-income per capita economy, with pockets of prosperity rather than even growth across all sectors of society.

Ah ..... I can remember the days of the 'BA Calcutta Failed' .... no problems getting them jobs then.

 

Update 2022: One in five people aged 16 to 24 are currently unemployed in China. While in India, more than 10,000 jobless young people turned up for interviews for just 15 low-skilled government jobs in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.