3 ms·

Anyone knowledgeable with an opinion on whether China has a mismatch between relatively high college attainment while remaining manufacturing oriented economy?

Anyone knowledgeable with an opinion on whether China has a mismatch between relatively high college attainment while remaining manufacturing oriented economy? In reference to this article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/01/china-graduates-jobs-market-youth-unemployment https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/01/china-graduate...

astrange 3y ago
Is China a manufacturing oriented economy? For export yes, but domestically they're overdependent on real estate because it's the only thing people believe you can invest in.
dirtyid 3y ago
This is pretty much all there is too it. East Asian culture bias towards scholarship. PRC academic reforms increased tertiary enrollment from single digits to 60%, which at PRC scale is currently ~10m new grads a year, with ~9x bias towards STEM (~5M/yr) / S&E vs US. Meanwhile culture looks down on bluecollar work, new gen wants to credentials to push paper in air conditioned offices, like almost every where else. And they are willing to wait - PRC (especially urban) has one of highest house hold savings rate in world for stay at home kids to fuck around. Until they can't, hence broad unemployment ~5%. Hence youth unemployment eventually resolved - people resign to do work they don't want to - again like almost everywhere else. Last/next few years PRC society has been/is dealing with academic inflation that west has been dealing with decades prior. Society is eventually going to have to recalibrate expectations while state elevates prestige of blue collar / vocational work, which is happening. More broadly, the talent mismatch / demographics layer PRC currently dealing with: 1. manufacturing / skilled blue collar shortage - TLDR is qualified (prodominantly) migrant workers are aging out, or accumulated enough wealth to chill in their houses bought in 3rd / 4th tier cities and finally ditch migrant life. 2a. PRC tertiary graduation rate is still working off early 2000s cohorts of 12M+ births per year vs current 9+. It's simply a stupid fucking amount of new high skilled jobs to create. (Urban) youth unemployment stats being pulled because we're in graduate season of one of the largest tertiary cohorts into slower post covid economy and unemployment likely to reach 40%+. Which btw counts 18-24yr actively looking so realistically 10-12M out of 33M (urban) youths entering workforce (total urban youth 96m), total youth including rural (~150m). 2b. Now consider at PRC scale of current ~12m new graduates (tertiary + skilled programs), even with 50% youth unemployment, that's 6m new youths entering workforce. For reference US adds ~2M youth job around summer. This is why west should be fucking terrified PRC youth unemployment is only 20%. Or 40%. Or 50%. That and PRC unemployment is 5%, meaning most youths end up working anyway, because that's life, when you have to work, you work. Add on fact that employement in strategic sectors that directly competes with advanced economies are doing fine. TLDR is PRC is broadly leading the talent gap game. The more important point from above is understand is current high % of youth unemployment is symptom of everything WORKING MOSTLY ACCORDING TO PLAN. PRC demographers / family planning goal was for resources/education to focus on cohorts of 1-2 kid house holds to build up PRC skilled talent workforce (currently still ~25% vs 60/70/80% of advanced economies). The goal was always to absolutely SPAM the shit out of high skilled talent production for next phase of PRC development beyond manufacturing. But customary to PRC, everything state focus on = excess overcapacity. So the problem is having too MUCH talent, which is different than having too LITTLE. More specifically having too much stubborn talent. All those credentialled PRC unemployed youths are qualified to work in fairly well compensated factory jobs, but won't because they don't want to. Reverse is not true, west has generally skilled talent shortage, that humanities major can't work in a semi factory because they stimply can't. IMO this is a problem will largely sort itself out, because PRC has surplus youths with access to work they can do but won't do out of pride. And by an large, the cultural system ( live at home) supports it, i.e. PRC parents especially wealthier urban are fine with their kids fuckarounditis at home sending out resumes instead of working that temporary menial job. Which is a very different problem than most of west having surplus jobs that their youths can't fill. Also helps not having 5+ figure student loan debt or car/rent expenses that force youths in some societies too work.
alephnerd 3y ago
College education numbers in China are overstated. Govt Statistics in China treat vocational programs (usually an extra year add-on to vocational high schools) and 4 year programs as "College", while statistics at least in the US don't put community colleges in the same bucket at 4 year programs. Realistically, the percentage of 4 year degree graduates in China is probably around 8-12% instead of the officially stated 18% (factoring in Zhongkao sorting rates). Mind you, this is still amazing progress for a country over 20 years (going from around 10% of all students enrolled in some kind of Tertiary education in 2001 to 58% of students in 2020), but there is plenty of work to still be done as quality is unevenly distributed. A big issue is the lack of respect for non-traditional students. A lot of China's human capital issues could be resolved if employers were more open to hiring students from "Open University" type programs (the Israeli model is a good example, unlike the British one which still has a negative stigma) as well as part-time or distance based programs, as well as removing the ridiculous Zhongkao and Gaokao filtering system.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
A lot of the higher education degrees in China are low quality: I mean, tourism schools in cities you've never heard of before pumping out Computer Science degrees. As for manufacturing, my guess is that factories don't want to hire college graduates for those jobs (why would they stay?) while there are fewer kids from the country side to take them on. China's rising urbanization rate has a disadvantage.
ecshafer 3y ago
Factories need managers, foreman, accountants, logistics, engineers or all stripes, IT, etc. Plus China has a huge amount of trade schools.
Leary 3y ago
China does not have a high college attainment rate If anything, it is slightly undereducated for its current GDP per capita [1] [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-years-of-schooling-vs-gdp-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-years-of-schoolin...

astrange 3y ago

Is China a manufacturing oriented economy? For export yes, but domestically they're overdependent on real estate because it's the only thing people believe you can invest in.

dirtyid 3y ago

This is pretty much all there is too it. East Asian culture bias towards scholarship. PRC academic reforms increased tertiary enrollment from single digits to 60%, which at PRC scale is currently ~10m new grads a year, with ~9x bias towards STEM (~5M/yr) / S&E vs US. Meanwhile culture looks down on bluecollar work, new gen wants to credentials to push paper in air conditioned offices, like almost every where else. And they are willing to wait - PRC (especially urban) has one of highest house hold savings rate in world for stay at home kids to fuck around. Until they can't, hence broad unemployment ~5%. Hence youth unemployment eventually resolved - people resign to do work they don't want to - again like almost everywhere else. Last/next few years PRC society has been/is dealing with academic inflation that west has been dealing with decades prior. Society is eventually going to have to recalibrate expectations while state elevates prestige of blue collar / vocational work, which is happening. More broadly, the talent mismatch / demographics layer PRC currently dealing with: 1. manufacturing / skilled blue collar shortage - TLDR is qualified (prodominantly) migrant workers are aging out, or accumulated enough wealth to chill in their houses bought in 3rd / 4th tier cities and finally ditch migrant life. 2a. PRC tertiary graduation rate is still working off early 2000s cohorts of 12M+ births per year vs current 9+. It's simply a stupid fucking amount of new high skilled jobs to create. (Urban) youth unemployment stats being pulled because we're in graduate season of one of the largest tertiary cohorts into slower post covid economy and unemployment likely to reach 40%+. Which btw counts 18-24yr actively looking so realistically 10-12M out of 33M (urban) youths entering workforce (total urban youth 96m), total youth including rural (~150m). 2b. Now consider at PRC scale of current ~12m new graduates (tertiary + skilled programs), even with 50% youth unemployment, that's 6m new youths entering workforce. For reference US adds ~2M youth job around summer. This is why west should be fucking terrified PRC youth unemployment is only 20%. Or 40%. Or 50%. That and PRC unemployment is 5%, meaning most youths end up working anyway, because that's life, when you have to work, you work. Add on fact that employement in strategic sectors that directly competes with advanced economies are doing fine. TLDR is PRC is broadly leading the talent gap game. The more important point from above is understand is current high % of youth unemployment is symptom of everything WORKING MOSTLY ACCORDING TO PLAN. PRC demographers / family planning goal was for resources/education to focus on cohorts of 1-2 kid house holds to build up PRC skilled talent workforce (currently still ~25% vs 60/70/80% of advanced economies). The goal was always to absolutely SPAM the shit out of high skilled talent production for next phase of PRC development beyond manufacturing. But customary to PRC, everything state focus on = excess overcapacity. So the problem is having too MUCH talent, which is different than having too LITTLE. More specifically having too much stubborn talent. All those credentialled PRC unemployed youths are qualified to work in fairly well compensated factory jobs, but won't because they don't want to. Reverse is not true, west has generally skilled talent shortage, that humanities major can't work in a semi factory because they stimply can't. IMO this is a problem will largely sort itself out, because PRC has surplus youths with access to work they can do but won't do out of pride. And by an large, the cultural system ( live at home) supports it, i.e. PRC parents especially wealthier urban are fine with their kids fuckarounditis at home sending out resumes instead of working that temporary menial job. Which is a very different problem than most of west having surplus jobs that their youths can't fill. Also helps not having 5+ figure student loan debt or car/rent expenses that force youths in some societies too work.

alephnerd 3y ago

College education numbers in China are overstated. Govt Statistics in China treat vocational programs (usually an extra year add-on to vocational high schools) and 4 year programs as "College", while statistics at least in the US don't put community colleges in the same bucket at 4 year programs. Realistically, the percentage of 4 year degree graduates in China is probably around 8-12% instead of the officially stated 18% (factoring in Zhongkao sorting rates). Mind you, this is still amazing progress for a country over 20 years (going from around 10% of all students enrolled in some kind of Tertiary education in 2001 to 58% of students in 2020), but there is plenty of work to still be done as quality is unevenly distributed. A big issue is the lack of respect for non-traditional students. A lot of China's human capital issues could be resolved if employers were more open to hiring students from "Open University" type programs (the Israeli model is a good example, unlike the British one which still has a negative stigma) as well as part-time or distance based programs, as well as removing the ridiculous Zhongkao and Gaokao filtering system.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

A lot of the higher education degrees in China are low quality: I mean, tourism schools in cities you've never heard of before pumping out Computer Science degrees. As for manufacturing, my guess is that factories don't want to hire college graduates for those jobs (why would they stay?) while there are fewer kids from the country side to take them on. China's rising urbanization rate has a disadvantage.

ecshafer 3y ago

Factories need managers, foreman, accountants, logistics, engineers or all stripes, IT, etc. Plus China has a huge amount of trade schools.

Leary 3y ago

China does not have a high college attainment rate If anything, it is slightly undereducated for its current GDP per capita [1] [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-years-of-schooling-vs-gdp-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-years-of-schoolin...