Recently on the local Chinese TV news a reporter interviewed a young female university graduate who was at her wits end trying to find a job. She had graduated last year. The story was rather ironic, in that China’s economy is booming. Isn’t it? Of course, for most of those following the economic news it’s well known that most of the nearly US$4 trillion that went flew out of bank doors in China went to the State Owned Enterprises and local governments (through the aegis of “dummy” corporations they set up specifically for the purpose of fleecing the banks). Money that actually flowed into the economy went into heavy industry and big infrastructure projects like roads and damns and railways. Though China is always inclined to put a lot of people on projects, in this instance the economies are just not labor intensive enough to absorb the bright young things graduating from the universities. Last year some 7 million fresh graduates flooded the labor pool. At the time, nearly thirty percent of the graduates from the previous year still had not found jobs.

Now, with a flood of new graduates and graduates from last year and even the year before competing in a tight marketplace, salary levels for entry level staff will be depressed even more. The downside of all the competition, however, will be perfectly good candidates who don’t know how to play the employment game well enough and will be shouldered aside. Some will commit suicide at the futility of the sacrifices they and their families made to get them into and through university.

What a terrible waste.