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China's Other Big Problem: 35 Applicants For One White Collar Job
Over a year ago, the world's most influential and central-banker spawning FDIC-backed hedge fund, Goldman Sachs, proudly revealed that despite 6 consecutive years of revelations of bank rigging, manipulation, fraud, bailout, crime and so on, there was no other job that the world's most ambitious young people wanted to do more:
As an investment bank, our main asset is our people and the advice and solutions that they provide to our clients. Great people build great relationships. And, we are fortunate to have a diverse group of young people from around the world who continue to view Goldman Sachs as a great place to begin and sustain their careers. For our latest analyst class, more than 43,000 candidates applied for 1,900 positions. We accepted about four percent of those applicants and of those receiving offers, more than 80 percent accepted.
Or, as Lloyd Blankfein would proudly calculate, 23 applicants for every job opening.
According to that logic, if working at Goldman is about as prestigious as it gets, then we know a job - based on unprecedented demand - that is even more prestigious: your average white-collar job in China, for which there were a record 35 application in the third quarter.
Indeed, in the world's most populous communist country where jobs used to be guaranteed - by definition - to anyone, in any walk of life, it has suddenly become next to impossible to progress up the career ladder, something which will result in great social angst and instability in the coming years.
According to China Daily, competition for white-collar jobs became fiercer in the third quarter, with more than 35 job seekers contending for the same position on average. This is a jump from 26 and 29 in the first and second quarters this year, a Chinese human resources website said on Tuesday.
The Daily cites Zhaopin.com's third-quarter jobs report for white-collar workers, which showed that demand for talent was shrinking with the slowdown of China's economic growth. At the same time, more such workers were considering changing jobs, leading to more competition among job hunters, especially those in Northeast China and in second-tier cites.
In Zhaopin's competition index for major cities, Shenyang and Dalian, both in Liaoning province, and Changchun, Jilin province - all in Northeast China - ranked first, fourth and eighth.
Zhu Hongyan, chief career consultant for the website, said that "the changing economic structure affects certain traditional careers. The need for professionals in certain fields declined, and some even disappeared." Hongyan added that "Workers in these industries are forced to seek career opportunities in other ones, increasing competition in the market for job seekers."
Moreover, second-tier cities such as Chengdu, Sichuan province, Suzhou, Jiangsu province, Xi'an, Shaanxi province, and Tianjin are all among the top 10 cities with the most competitive job market.
Beijing ranked ninth, while Shanghai ranked 18th.
Zhu, the career consultant, said the trend of white collar workers shifting their jobs to fast-developing second-or third-tier cities has become more prominent because of the high pressures of working and living in larger cities, deteriorating environments and restrictions on cars and housing.
"Regional preferential policies have helped second-and third-tier cities attract overflow industries and companies from the overcrowded metropolises, which have their own restrictions such as limited land and other resources," Zhu said.
"However, second-and third-tier cities do not have the same mature economic structure and industries as the metropolises," added Zhu. "So not all job seekers can find satisfactory jobs."
And with 35 applicants for any one job, that is precisely what is happening.
Worse, due to surging labor market competition and the drop of vacant positions for which there is demands - usually at the best paid positions in the labor chain - wages are about to tumble as employers realize they can pay anything they want: after all if someone quits, there are 34 other workers happy to replace him.
This has two major impllcations:
- first, with wages set to drop, yet another source of deflation is about to be unveiled;
- second, as China's economic collapse leads to increasingly less job opening , it inevitably means that social tensions and violence are set to rise in a country which see the migration of tens of millions of people from the heartland to the coastal cities.
Finally, all those conflicting forecasts in 2011 that China may or may not hit wage parity with the US some time in 2016, well - we now know the answer: China may have reached its Lewis point, but now that the economy is on its way to a crash landing, it has solidly gone into reverse.
(for those asking what China's first problem is, well there are many to choose from, but if given just one option, we would repeat what we said last night when we reported that "CLSA Just Stumbled On The Neutron Bomb In China's Banking System" - the country's trillion in non-performing loans which nobody is talking about just yet).
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Print jobs not wealth.......
In the US the ratio is like 200:1.
35:1 is actually pretty good.
{ublicus, was thinking the same thing. Here in India as well, probably more than that even....
That said, a collar, blue or white usually comes with a chain...something to ponder...
The future of work does not look like it does today...
30+ years in Information Technology and I can't even get a job as a support analyst. Every single job I apply for has 100+ applicants. No recession here.....bitches.
Attention China : The squid has landed.
You are under attack you weenies...
What's really scary is that China has a migrant worker population that exceeds the entire population of the United States. Think about that. Over 360 MILLION people on the move. Is China worried about revolts? You bet your ass they are. In China, "social harmony" trumps "civil liberties" every day and twice on Sunday. It's a good thing things are so swell over there right now... /sarc
Yup. They need an enemy they can all hate to unify the nation and have them take their eyes off of all the shiny new Mercedes driving around...
Could you start your own business? Home based. A major bank in New Zealand let go all its IT staff and outsourced it to India. Don't know what happens if a computer breaks down.
You nailed it Kiwigal, Make your own job. This is a huge part of the slave mind conditioning, that we are dependent on someone i.e a corporation or government , to "give" us a job. Freedom is not having a "boss" and not being part of some policy controlled gang. I can speak my mind freely and not have fear of upsetting someone by the micro aggression of being politically inorrect. If my customers dont like what I have to say and believe me I "say" a lot, well there is no one they can complain to get me fired or bullied into thinking the "right" way .
Your information is safe and secure. Our bottom line says it is so!
20+ years here. Same same. 47 y/o. If I have to talk to another stupid fucking HR cunt...
They don't know shit about the work. And they act like the last 20 years doesn't mean anything. Not that long ago, people who actually worked in the field did the interviewing to see if you knew your shit and could get along with them. Now politically correct feminist leaning HR women are screening and they know absolutely nothing about the work. All they care about are certs, which in the real world in my experience don't mean shit (they may indicate competency but not a guarantee).
But now HR decides. If she thinks you're too coarse, to masculine, or not politically correct, fugeddaboudit.
Salaries for network admin (way below what I've done) are around $40k here. I made $35k at my first sysadmin job in 2000. And I had not certs, just self-taught. I knew guys making $60k back then.
35:1? The last two jobs I did land in 2007, and 2010, I was selected out of over 100 applicants. I'd have a job right now if 35:1 was the ratio here. The last chance I had to ask recently, the ratio was over 250:1.
Yeah, some recovery.
America FUCK YEAH!
...And we all have the robot revolution to look forward to. Humans are going to become increasingly superfluous.
Yes NB, Japan is a classic symptom and example of the future of work and life in a mechanized, free money society.
AKA, a deeply SICK and diseased society...not good...
Down voteed both you guys.
I don't think the robot factories are going to come, or will progress much past the point where they are now.
Billion dollar companies like Facebook and PayPal can't make bug-free fucking software, over-all the quality and reliability of software systems suck, so, is there really the competence and the abilty to create and *maintain* such complex robot's and advanced assembly processes?
There is a big difference between "science" and "technology."
But, Even if I am wrong, 100% dead wrong, what are they (the manufactures) going to do? Have huge warehouses full of fucking robots, churning out tons of shit, that no one has any money to buy because they are all out of work? The economy and financal systems are too fucked to even support this.
How does a robot economy even work in an environment where wages are already massively deflationary?
The great 25 year mega infaltionary super printing highly roboticized economy of Japan IS the tell....right there...
To keep it going, the people have to become robotic is all...
Quaint thinking. The displacement has already begun, and the science and technology are progressing at a logarithmic pace.
I'm not saying that I like it, but it is reality.
FWIW,
Chatted w/someone that WAS in Detroit (auto). He saw what was coming. Had to train his replacement at a fraction of his wages before given the boot. He happened to maintain the robotics. Well, he didn't train the fella correctly, which caused the whole operation to shut down at major cost. Needless to say, his replacement was sacked & his arrogant back stabbing boss in his meeelion dollar McMansion got the sack & lost his home.
Anything that can replace a human, will, techno speaking.
Survival = agrarian. It's been bred out of populace as has cures for common maladies.
Then there's the issue of water, as all here can see what's happening with that.
As far as the chain part goes, the future of work looks a lot like today. Only more so. More chains, less cash...less of everything else the worker wants and needs.
Last white-collar job I applied for, in a small college town, there were over 120 applicants.
A 51-foot high replica of dog excrement and a gigantic blow-up cockroach may not have seemed the most auspicious figures with which to launch Hong Kong's ambitious West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD) project.
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/14/west-kowloon-cultural-district-suffers-co...|finance|headline|headline|story&par=yahoo&doc=103069298
The 51-foot high pile of dogshit was... get this... and you may be wise to sit down...
MADE IN THE UNITED STATES
Getty Images An inflatable sculpture called 'Complex Pile' by American contemporary artist Paul Mccarthy on display at West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong.Indeed.
I can't remember the exact number, but when I asked my oh-so-valuable HR Manager (/s) about how many people I competed against for my position it was somewhere aroud 350.
It gets even worse if you are trying to get into the legal/banking sectors. I talked to an employee at a gym who said he was fighting against 600 other applicants for one position in law while working a close to minimum wage job at the gym. He is so fucked.
I have a recent college grad, very bright and not ugly, working at Mrs. Refuse-Resist's law office for minimum wage, 25 hours per week. She also moonlights as a bar tender.
25 years ago there is no way in hell a recent grad in prelaw/business would be working for minimum wage. The average bus. admin grad I knew started out around $20k per year, engineering around $30k.
That was roughly 2.5 - 4 times minimum wage back then. If the economy was worth a fuck, a new bus. admin. grad would be starting at let's say 3x minimum wage, so around $40k per year.
That definitely isn't happening.
What's funnier is that this young lady (BA, Sorority et al) has a cousin who also lives here. Her, a single mom with mystery meat (non-white) child, has the same job for another law office. That one makes $10/hour becausee instead of going to college, she popped out a niglet, and worked at Subway and made her way to assistant manager. Both young women are bright and reasonably attractive if a little on the heavy side.
**************
My daughters are being seriously pressured by their school to choose a college and a major. The elder is waking up to the scam and said to me the other day "Dad, why would I want to go in debt for life, for a degree tha may not even get me a job?" I looked toward heaven and thanked Almighty God that she found the truth. That something I said to her finally sunk in.
Mabye the lies of feminism are becoming apparent? That most women won't find happiness on the college/cock carousel/cubicle career path by forsaking motherhood during peak fertility years. What you end up with is a bunch of 30 y/o single women (future spinsters), looking face first at the wall, realizing they were lied to. Gets on antidepressans, gets fat, no hubby, no kids, but lots of cats and probably toxo-plasmosis.
Women who marry and have kids earlier end up being happier, and get a better choice of available men.
Have any of you heard of the "No Hymen No Diamond" movement?
Fighting the lies and the brainwashing directed at young women is a monumental task. One thing's for sure is that when they jump on the cock carousel, the lose a bunch of value when they decide (usually too late) to jump off.
If I can teach my daughters that then I'll feel like I've accomplished somethign worthwhile. That woman are not men. That we are not equal. That when one gender tries to assume the role of the other you end up with a charicature who is deeply unhappy, and most likely ends up in psychiatric care and on drugs.
I just hope none of your daughters will listen to your old geezer rants.
Obviously, ZH is oblivious to what's happening in India.
China and India have approx the same population size.
A peon is an office boy for which job millions are applications are received in multiple Indian states.
I do not even want to know what the ratio of applicants is - wonder if a calculator can crack the ratio :).
Perhaps we can hear the same about India here rather than just about China! Jealousy is not a good thing to have, when one depends so much on China!
India and China put together have over 37% of humanity living between them. No one knows how these 2 countries work, all I know is that China has a lot of money and a lot of banks and a lot of growth and a lot of railways/airports/roads/buildings/malls and a lot of factories producing stuff for us urbanites living around the world! According to some estimates 1/3rd of all cars are built in China and more than 50% of all computers are built in China and almost 80% of all shoes are made in China....and so on....
255 doctorates among 23 lakh applicants for peon's jobs in Uttar Pradesh
75,000 applications for 30 peon posts, officials cancel examWei Tu Lo
It's not that great in the US either, in 2013 Delta received 20,000 applicants for 300 job openings. People were hyping up the oilfield long past it's "anyone can get a job" time frame as well. I had a friend that worked the job fair table for an oil services company way before the bust and they were getting hundreds more skilled applicants then they needed frequently as well, they were just hyping the circumstance to reel them in to put pressure on wages.
I am always looking for jobs and fishing around the job market even when I have one and lately there is a tendency to refuse to reveal wage or salary amount until you go to interview, fuck that.
It's starting to look like working for a living is not where one is going to want to be in the future.
They are so fucked - shot the load in last two decades trying a "capitalist" system for 1.3 billion in an almost communist regime - this will sink them and the U.S. For years to come
Captialism has been dead for years. What you've been told is 'capitalism' has morphed into fascism.
"White" Collar job?
Someone help me out here, is that Rayciss?
Yeah....nowadays, if you don't like The Blue Man Group you're racist.
"Finally, all those conflicting forecasts in 2011 that China may or may not hit wage parity with the US some time in 2016, well - we now know the answer:"
Yes, if US workers' wages sink low enough they will reach parity with chinese wages.
Did you know that if all the labor for iPhone was done in the US by workers paid $50k a year the iPhone price would increase only $38 to keep the same margins, the cheap labor in China is a lie. This is not about costs anymore it is all about extremist followers and the ideology of globalism that destroys working and middle classes all over the world and China starts to experiencing the same.
https://contrarianopinion.wordpress.com/economy-update/
This could just be a symptom of resume-spamming. Lots of companies think they're hiring the top 1% because they get 100 applications for each job opening. Joel Spolsky wrote a funny article debunking that fallacy:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html
Unemployment for those under thirty is in a crisis stage worldwide. Computers and robots are simply eliminating the need for many employees. Robots do not need healthcare or vacations. Also, those currently employed are required to do the work of their fired co-worker. The Georgia Guidestones indicate that a sustainable world population would be 500 million. Nuclear radiation "accidents", pandemics, and wars are the fastest ways to reduce population. Induced earthquakes and tsunamis can also elminate populations, if strategically targeted. Stay tuned for further developments.
Stick to the basics
Overpopulation ------> increasing pollution and scarcity
Has been predicted for decades
That's nothing. A medical practice in Auckland,New Zealand advertised for an assistant to help set out medical instruments for minor surgery. A family member reported there were 700 applicants.
So it started and I have to admit I was wrong.
Here an excerpt from my comment on ZH just few months ago.
It did not take them 20 months to start destroying their newly fledged middle class reading from the western playbook.
More on the demise of China's global trade I found at:
https://contrarianopinion.wordpress.com/economy-update/
What's to stop the use of the Citizen's Score system in China to "score" folks that can get an opportunity to apply next? Be aware of this as we have some of it in the US with our Digital Caste System that nobody wants to talk about.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2015/10/citizen-score-in-china-huge-warning-for.html
If you have not paid attention, which few have or it has not been reported much in the news..our President gave private industry a free haul on mining and selling our personal data with the last Executive Order. All a company has to do is say "its for the good and supply some of the data to a federal agency" needing data for research. We all know how that can be tweaked and taken out of context and the selling of the US consumer will continue. Heck they can't even say the words "Data Selling" in the White House.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2015/09/excess-scoring-of-us-consumers-us.html
Companies and governments use "scoring" formulas to restrain, restrict or stop access for the consumer.
While the statistic is impressive as a standalone number, I wish they would break it down to only two categories: Those applicants who are currently employed, and those who are not.
In times of wage stagnation, sometimes moving to a new job is the only way to improve your income.
That's been my story since graduating college in 1992. Changing jobs = salary increase.
Staying at same job = wage stangation, layoffs along with no raise and doing former co-worker's jobs.
BTDT got the shirt.
Under Mao Tse-Tung there were plenty of "red collar" (government) jobs...but these types of jobs disappeared when China started to embrace capitalism ...too many Chinese watched western TV shows like "the rich and the famous"... and "miami vice"...we have corrupted the youth of the world...
My friend got a PhD in Comp Science, 18 years in the IT industry, releases his own softwares, writes his own technical blogs and publishes two technical textbooks. He is trying to find another job for nearly a year, still no luck.
Amen! My hubby is an IT pro and got laid off in USA and was unemployed for about 2 years. Has a Masters froma major USA college. ALl worthless after he turned 40 and a few years after than got the boot.
I tell all young people now that if they want to go into IT that they learn other skills as well or become filthy rich by 35. IT is NOT the great career that it is made out to be.
All around the world kids have been played for suckers by propaganda that a college education means a great job and big bucks. The reality is colleges only care about filling seats. All around the world there is a glut of college educated people and there will never be enough jobs for them. Yet we are bombarded daily either directly or by insinuation that college is the way to go. College should be reserved for the smart and talented but if the colleges have their way anyone that can fog a mirror and has cash in hand or access to cash like a loan is welcome. Unfortunately the suckers are still lining up for a shot at being fleeced.
Worked in a restaurant on fisherman's wharf in San Francisco as a kid. Most of the Chinese dish washers and porters had PHD 's from Beijing