Yesterday I chatted with a young Chinese local who had been making the rounds of interviews in Suzhou. She had been laid off from her job as an interpreter from an American manufacturer in the area. Apparently, she pressed for a raise at just about the worst time an individual could: just as Wall Street and the American automotive industry were melting down and no one knew quite who would be the next president of the United States. Her two years work experience did not help save her job.

When I talked with her she had just finished an interview with a Taiwanese corporate training company. It had been her second interview with a company since the end of the Spring Festival. “There were fifty people for the interview,” she told me. Company management had had the group of hopefuls herded into the same waiting area.

The day before she had dropped her resume at a job search agency that promised – with the payment of a couple hundred RMB – to blast her resume out to target companies.

“You know,” I told her, “Taiwanese companies don’t have such a great reputation in China for treating their staff well.”

“I know,” she said, “I don’t want to work for a Taiwanese company; but no choice. I have to find a job.” Her family was acutely feeling the loss of a third of its income with her unemployment. The position of proctor for electronic English-learning pays about 1,500 RMB per month, she told me. Before, she was making 2,300 RMB per month.

“There are very few Western and Japanese companies hiring,” she said, “Most of the companies hiring are Chinese or Taiwanese.”

A Wall Street Journal article from today bears out her observation:

“Foreign direct investment in China plunged 33% in January from the same month last year to $7.53 billion, the Ministry of Commerce said Monday, as the global economic downturn slowed capital flows into the world’s third-largest economy…Tao Wang, China economic research head of UBS securities, … expects direct foreign investment into China to drop 30% to 40% for all of 2009.”

Looks like our interpreter-friend in is for long, hard job search.