Chinese students at a job fair in Dongguan (Guangdong province) on June 11. (Source: VCG)

Postponed graduation

In her first month after graduating from college, Cassie Sun, 24, a finance major at a university in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, applied to more than 200 companies and monitored recruitment applications “from morning to night.”

“The first day, I applied to 20 companies and got no response. I got more and more anxious and applied for more jobs every day,” she shared.

Although Cassie Sun has had a few part-time jobs and internships since graduating in 2021, none of them were related to her major.

Cassie Sun shared: "Employers ask why I have graduated for a year but still have no experience in this field. I feel that companies only want to hire new graduates or people who have worked for a long time. I am thinking about going abroad to find a job."

Youth unemployment is a "headache" problem for China, the world's second largest economy.

The unemployment rate for those aged 16 to 24 hit a new record of 20.8% in May 2023, up from 20.4%.

The employment situation will improve as the economy grows stronger, said Fu Linghui, spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics of China.

However, there is real reason for concern, according to analysts.

“The economic outlook in China is very bleak,” said Sun Xin, a senior lecturer at King’s College London. “The recovery is much weaker than people expected.”

Mao Xuxin, an economist at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in the UK, said that China’s youth unemployment rate has worsened due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic has prevented job creation while Chinese students have chosen to delay graduation to pursue higher education.

“For this reason, it is increasingly difficult for the younger generation to find their dream job or even a full-time job,” said Mr. Mao.

Want to change life with lottery tickets

Amid an increasingly difficult job market and a fragile economic recovery, many young Chinese have found solace in buying lottery tickets.

For example, Fred Jia (28 years old), a bank employee in Beijing, has maintained the habit of buying lottery tickets regularly three times a week, with 20 yuan (2.8 USD) each time.

“I wanted to be rich and change my life, but my job couldn't bring me the wealth I wanted,” he said.

Wayne Zheng, 27, said he has been buying scratch cards since last year through videos on China’s Bilibili platform. “I bought the scratch cards because I really wanted to get rich overnight,” he said.

According to China's Ministry of Finance, in the first four months of 2023 alone, the total value of lottery tickets and scratch cards sold hit a record 175.15 billion yuan ($24.5 billion), up 49.3% year-on-year.

Data from the agency also showed that all 31 provinces and provincial-level regions in China recorded a sharp increase in sales of lottery tickets and scratch cards in recent times.

“Lotteries are essentially a tax on the poor,” said Ms. Dan Wang, head of Hang Seng Bank of China.

According to Ms. Wang, the job market is even harsher for low-income people during the current economic recession, causing many people to turn to the lottery as a way out for themselves.