3 ms·

"One explanation I heard while there is that there are plenty of menial jobs available, but today's educated youth - who've gone through high school and college

"One explanation I heard while there is that there are plenty of menial jobs available, but today's educated youth - who've gone through high school and college - just won't take the low-skilled positions their parents and grandparents did. Meanwhile, there's a real shortage of the high-skilled jobs that would actually match their education and aspirations. It's a mismatch between the jobs available and the jobs young people feel qualified for and willing to do." Same problem the US has. Too much education for the job market. Only about half of US college graduates have jobs that actually need a college education. The last time China had this problem, Mao said "It is very necessary for the educated youth to go to the countryside and undergo re-education by poor peasants." 40 million students were rusticated. Historically, this leads to unrest. Egypt hit this, with good education but, especially post oil boom, not many jobs that needed it.

f1shy 2y ago
This is happening all around the globe, I would argue. There is title (hyper)-inflation. In the EU are just lots of PhD, doing jobs that hardly require more than some basic training.
rad_gruchalski 2y ago
> Same problem the US has. Too much education for the job market. Quite a stark contrast to arguments used by the soon-in-power in the current US H-1B political kerfuffle. However, this is happening in a lot of places.
maxglute 2y ago
TBF very simple (not easy, but anticipated) structural problem: currently PRC ~5 years into ~20 year period where the intersection of cohort from when PRC had higher TFR - was generating 15m+ new borns while simultaneously massively expanding tertiary capacity and enrollment (single digit to 60% and increasing). Unsurprisingly (and again anticipated when scale of academic reforms was being proposed) sought after air conditioned office jobs hasn't kept pace to frankly stupendous tertiary expansion, meanwhile tuition doesn't drive PRC student into crippling debt, and parents have high savings % to doddle kids who can afford to fuck around. Broad unemployment is steady ~5% - sooner or later youth will enter workforce doing less desirable jobs when they realize they're not tier1 material. Same with all the ones now chillaxing in tier2+ cities, not everyone makes the grind in NYC either. West simply had to deal with academic inflation earlier and culture have already learned to live with paper degrees. If one followed the domestic/elite debate 30 years ago (project 211/985), it was exceedingly obvious CCP decided it was more useful to max out the dial to brrrrt teritary talent generation even if it means eventual talent oversupply and opportunity mismatch. At end of the day, more useful to have excess talent where top minds are discovered and coordinated, then not. Teritiary talent can fail back to delivering DiDi, but undereducated DiDi driver not going to work in fabs. Still given PRC youth unemployment rates, the % employed is still integrating ~2-3x more STEM workforce per year vs US (excluding non STEM technical fields). They have massive relative youth unemployment, but massive absolute youth employment that has closed the STEM/technical #s with US in last decade, and set to lead for decade(s). Like if current trend/ratio continues, PRC set to add 40M stem in next 20 years, about as much US projected to gain population total (births + immigration). The talent:opportunity gap will eventually close since new cohorts moving from 15m new birth years to 9 million (and declining) new births, i.e. if PRC keep pace with high skilled job generation (difficult), they'll eventually experience (skilled) talent shortage, but by then they may well have OECD combined in high end talent in the workforce. There isn't going to be rustication, unless you count mediocre people realizing they're doomed to mediocre work in mediocre location rustication. And ultimately, that's what all the developing tier2/3+ cities and interior provinces is about, why CCP was lolling at all the naive (western) urbanists trying to convince them to increase tier1 density to increase productivity and follow zipf scaling. CCP solution is to tell people NYC is full, but here, we build multiple NYC alternatives, with comparable amenities, slower pace for the mediocre/mids (not meant to disparage but mere statistic reality), but you'll end up making 1/2 the money but have same or better QoL because local PPP is scaled accordingly. They're not moving people to the countryside, they're moving people to other world class cities.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Agraillo 2y ago
This comment inspires a more philosophical observation. I tend to notice that it's an illusion that education exists for the sole purpose of preparing human labor for future jobs. Partially it does, but another part is fixing progress consequences. Imagine you traveled to the past where 99% of workers were agricultural ones and explained that there would be a future when only 10% is required to fulfill needs for food for others. They obviously complain that it would be terrible because so many jobs would be lost and so on. But humanity is great at inventing new occupations. Fast forward from the past to present. We have many schools, universities where there are many paid jobs (tutors, clerks, management) and many unpaid occupations (pupils, students). In our hypothetical past only a tiny fraction of the population could afford to belong to these two categories. And the latter can afford to be unpaid because progress allows their parents to pay for them in order for them to be occupied without a paid job.

f1shy 2y ago

This is happening all around the globe, I would argue. There is title (hyper)-inflation. In the EU are just lots of PhD, doing jobs that hardly require more than some basic training.

rad_gruchalski 2y ago

> Same problem the US has. Too much education for the job market. Quite a stark contrast to arguments used by the soon-in-power in the current US H-1B political kerfuffle. However, this is happening in a lot of places.

maxglute 2y ago

TBF very simple (not easy, but anticipated) structural problem: currently PRC ~5 years into ~20 year period where the intersection of cohort from when PRC had higher TFR - was generating 15m+ new borns while simultaneously massively expanding tertiary capacity and enrollment (single digit to 60% and increasing). Unsurprisingly (and again anticipated when scale of academic reforms was being proposed) sought after air conditioned office jobs hasn't kept pace to frankly stupendous tertiary expansion, meanwhile tuition doesn't drive PRC student into crippling debt, and parents have high savings % to doddle kids who can afford to fuck around. Broad unemployment is steady ~5% - sooner or later youth will enter workforce doing less desirable jobs when they realize they're not tier1 material. Same with all the ones now chillaxing in tier2+ cities, not everyone makes the grind in NYC either. West simply had to deal with academic inflation earlier and culture have already learned to live with paper degrees. If one followed the domestic/elite debate 30 years ago (project 211/985), it was exceedingly obvious CCP decided it was more useful to max out the dial to brrrrt teritary talent generation even if it means eventual talent oversupply and opportunity mismatch. At end of the day, more useful to have excess talent where top minds are discovered and coordinated, then not. Teritiary talent can fail back to delivering DiDi, but undereducated DiDi driver not going to work in fabs. Still given PRC youth unemployment rates, the % employed is still integrating ~2-3x more STEM workforce per year vs US (excluding non STEM technical fields). They have massive relative youth unemployment, but massive absolute youth employment that has closed the STEM/technical #s with US in last decade, and set to lead for decade(s). Like if current trend/ratio continues, PRC set to add 40M stem in next 20 years, about as much US projected to gain population total (births + immigration). The talent:opportunity gap will eventually close since new cohorts moving from 15m new birth years to 9 million (and declining) new births, i.e. if PRC keep pace with high skilled job generation (difficult), they'll eventually experience (skilled) talent shortage, but by then they may well have OECD combined in high end talent in the workforce. There isn't going to be rustication, unless you count mediocre people realizing they're doomed to mediocre work in mediocre location rustication. And ultimately, that's what all the developing tier2/3+ cities and interior provinces is about, why CCP was lolling at all the naive (western) urbanists trying to convince them to increase tier1 density to increase productivity and follow zipf scaling. CCP solution is to tell people NYC is full, but here, we build multiple NYC alternatives, with comparable amenities, slower pace for the mediocre/mids (not meant to disparage but mere statistic reality), but you'll end up making 1/2 the money but have same or better QoL because local PPP is scaled accordingly. They're not moving people to the countryside, they're moving people to other world class cities.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Agraillo 2y ago

This comment inspires a more philosophical observation. I tend to notice that it's an illusion that education exists for the sole purpose of preparing human labor for future jobs. Partially it does, but another part is fixing progress consequences. Imagine you traveled to the past where 99% of workers were agricultural ones and explained that there would be a future when only 10% is required to fulfill needs for food for others. They obviously complain that it would be terrible because so many jobs would be lost and so on. But humanity is great at inventing new occupations. Fast forward from the past to present. We have many schools, universities where there are many paid jobs (tutors, clerks, management) and many unpaid occupations (pupils, students). In our hypothetical past only a tiny fraction of the population could afford to belong to these two categories. And the latter can afford to be unpaid because progress allows their parents to pay for them in order for them to be occupied without a paid job.