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In a youth hostel in downtown Shanghai, amid the dull roar of a hair dryer, the shriek of a blender and the lingering aroma of spicy instant noodles, Ethan Yi, 23, was pondering the state of the world. “Why can’t I, a college graduate, find a job?” Yi lamented as he sat in the hostel’s common room after a day of unsuccessful interviews. “Why is it only jobs that pay just $400 or $500 a month that want me? I wonder, how can it be this hard?”
That is the question being asked in hostelsacross China.As joblessness among young Chinese has reached record highs, hostels have become refuges for young people trying their fortunes in major cities, who need a place to crash between back-to-back interviews, to strategise on their next networking meeting or to fire off yet another resume. They have become concentrated hubs for people’s anxiety, hopes, despair and ambitions, all packed into bunk beds that go for a few dollars a night.
At the Together Hostel, where Yi was staying, new arrivals scrolled through online job listings. Posters advertising local comedy shows went largely ignored. The hostels are necessary partly because of the hypercompetitive nature of China’s white-collar job market. The most desirable opportunities are still concentrated in a few megacities like Shanghai or Shenzhen, even as the number of universities and university graduates around the country has ballooned.
As the Chinese economy slows, competition has grown even stiffer. Unemployment among 16- to 24-year-olds in urban areas rose to a record high of 21.3% in June, before the government stopped publishing the data. Even some young people who have landed jobs are paid so little that they cannot afford a deposit on a long-term lease, or are afraid to sign one for fear of suddenly being laid off. That was the case with Yi’s upper bunkmate.
Though recent graduates have among the highest rates of joblessness, others have struggled too. In the lobby, Kris Zhang, 30, lay on a couch trying to nap. Zhang had worked in the city of Hangzhou as a well-paid computer programmer at Alibaba until he was laid off earlier this year. He wanted to stay in Hangzhou, where he had already bought a house and an Audi, but couldn’t find a new job there that would pay well enough to cover his more than $27,000 annually in mortgage and car loans. So the week before, he had reluctantly accepted an offer in Shanghai, while continuing to look for positions in Hangzhou. He was living in the hostel in the hope that his stay in Shanghai would be brief. But Zhang acknowledged the reality might be more difficult. “Before, you could search with your eyes closed and get dozens of offers a year,” he said. “The situation now is much worse.”
That is the question being asked in hostelsacross China.As joblessness among young Chinese has reached record highs, hostels have become refuges for young people trying their fortunes in major cities, who need a place to crash between back-to-back interviews, to strategise on their next networking meeting or to fire off yet another resume. They have become concentrated hubs for people’s anxiety, hopes, despair and ambitions, all packed into bunk beds that go for a few dollars a night.
At the Together Hostel, where Yi was staying, new arrivals scrolled through online job listings. Posters advertising local comedy shows went largely ignored. The hostels are necessary partly because of the hypercompetitive nature of China’s white-collar job market. The most desirable opportunities are still concentrated in a few megacities like Shanghai or Shenzhen, even as the number of universities and university graduates around the country has ballooned.
As the Chinese economy slows, competition has grown even stiffer. Unemployment among 16- to 24-year-olds in urban areas rose to a record high of 21.3% in June, before the government stopped publishing the data. Even some young people who have landed jobs are paid so little that they cannot afford a deposit on a long-term lease, or are afraid to sign one for fear of suddenly being laid off. That was the case with Yi’s upper bunkmate.
Though recent graduates have among the highest rates of joblessness, others have struggled too. In the lobby, Kris Zhang, 30, lay on a couch trying to nap. Zhang had worked in the city of Hangzhou as a well-paid computer programmer at Alibaba until he was laid off earlier this year. He wanted to stay in Hangzhou, where he had already bought a house and an Audi, but couldn’t find a new job there that would pay well enough to cover his more than $27,000 annually in mortgage and car loans. So the week before, he had reluctantly accepted an offer in Shanghai, while continuing to look for positions in Hangzhou. He was living in the hostel in the hope that his stay in Shanghai would be brief. But Zhang acknowledged the reality might be more difficult. “Before, you could search with your eyes closed and get dozens of offers a year,” he said. “The situation now is much worse.”
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