A college student exhibits a robot produced by his enterprise established by a group of college student entrepreneurs in Harbin Institute of Technology.

 

More and more recent college graduates are choosing to work at small private enterprises as well as businesses in small cities and knowledge-intensive industries, according to the 2016 Chinese College Graduates Employment Annual Report released on June 12 in Beijing.

The report written by MyCOS Research, a private company specializing in higher education data, also comprehensively evaluates all aspects of the job market, including unemployment, salary and job satisfaction responded. 

The report found that the employment rate for recent graduates has remained relatively steady for the past three years, hovering around 92 percent since 2013. Although the Chinese economy faced downward pressure in 2015 and 2016, as the report points out, the employment rate has not fluctuated, because more graduates are self-employed or choose to continue their higher education.

The statistics indicate a rising self-employment rate from 2.3 percent in 2013 to 3 percent in 2015 and the proportion of those pursuing further education has grown from 8 percent in 2013 to 10.1 percent in 2015. In addition to this, such knowledge-intensive industries as information technology, education and health care have grown rapidly in recent years, helping recent graduates to adjust to the changing economic structure more easily than other groups in the job market.

The percentage of graduates who started their own business steadily grew as a result of preferential policies intended to stimulate entrepreneurship that the government rolled out in 2010, and about 48 percent of the businesses that were established in 2012 are still active three years after graduation, an increase from 42 percent in 2010, according to the report.

The average monthly salary of college graduates who started their career in 2012 in the third year after graduation is about 5,700 yuan ($865), an 87 percent increase over their starting salary in 2012, which is far higher than the average growth rate among urban residents. The mid-term return of college education is obvious, the report concludes.

In addition to this, based on a statistical analysis of the graduates’ responses, the report suggests graduates’ satisfaction with their alma maters has consistently grown in the past five years, rising from 82 percent in 2011 to 89 percent in 2015.