Tough job market teaches China´s graduates a lesson in life

Source: Xinhua | 02-18-2009 08:18

BEIJING, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- Yan Ju should consider herself lucky. She's been offered a job at a hotel where she served as an intern for a month while millions of other graduates are still desperately seeking work.

Yan, however, is still holding out for something better.

"My ideal is to work with the financial sector of a state-owned enterprise," says the 22-year-old, who will graduate from the Beijing Technology and Business University in June.

She wants a job where she can use her statistics major, but she sees no chance of that at the little-known hotel, one of the "internship bases" promoted to graduates by the government.

Almost 2,000 companies have been named "internship bases", offering 60,000 positions in finance, publishing, telecommunications, manufacturing and transportation.

Businesses that can provide positions for at least 10 interns each year with basic living allowances can be selected for the scheme, one of the measures to ease the imbalance between a glut of graduates and a shortage of "high end" jobs worsened by mass lay-offs and business closures.

According to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS), 7.1 million college graduates will chase jobs this year, including 1 million who failed to secure employment last year.

Premier Wen Jiabao said in January that finding jobs for graduates was a government priority, and the State Council announced a series of new measures to boost graduate employment over the weekend.