For the past month, Rachel has been looking for work in Shanghai, China. "I'm expecting to earn 6,000 or 7,000 yuan [€777 or €907], just enough to pay the rent and put food on the table, but I'm hoping to find a company that will allow me to flourish, in advertising or marketing," said the young woman. An interesting job: This is what many young people from China's middle class are looking for, even if it means accepting a low salary or learning to be patient. Graduating in the summer of 2022, as one lockdown followed another in China, Rachel (she gave only her English first name), 28, went through a few interviews, before returning to her parents' home to wait for better days. She's almost become a "full-time child," she said with a smile, an expression that has come to designate unemployed graduates who have decided to stay with their parents and be supported, sometimes in exchange for helping out. It's a symptom, among others, of a slowing economy.

Youth unemployment has never been higher than in 2023. In June, it reached a record high of 21.3%. With a new cohort of graduates, July's figures were shaping up to be even worse. The authorities have decided to stop releasing details of unemployment by age group. This move has prompted a deluge of online criticism: On the microblogging site Weibo, the subject attracted 140 million views in just a few hours.

The reasons for this are well known: The country has not recovered from three years of its drastic zero-Covid policy and has been having a difficult year. Exports are plummeting, real estate is in an unprecedented crisis and domestic consumption has been struggling to recover. As a result, despite a weak basis for comparison, China is barely expected to reach its growth target for 2023, set "around 5%" at the beginning of the year.

Schools under pressure

In this crisis context, young people, who lack experience, are generally the first to be affected. Officially, total urban unemployment has remained low, at 5% in September, even if this analysis has been criticized. (It excludes migrant workers, considered as rural.) Young people are all the more affected as they work mainly in the sectors most exposed to the crisis (services, private sector, precarious jobs), and less in the public sector and industry.

To make matters worse, between 2021 and 2022, the Chinese authorities launched a regulatory campaign against web platforms such as Alibaba, Tencent and Meituan. Hardest hit, the private tutoring sector was virtually banned in July 2021, resulting in the elimination of hundreds of thousands of teaching jobs. At the same time, a campaign to reduce the indebtedness of property developers has led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of jobs, from construction workers to architects, estate agents and mortgage brokers. Already burned by the costly zero-Covid policy, Chinese entrepreneurs have been wondering where the Communist Party's next campaign will strike.

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