Jobs in Shanghai are scarce for liberal arts students

By Wang Han Source:Global Times Published: 2016-1-15 0:12:28

According to a report issued by China's Ministry of Education, some 90 percent of the country's lowest-employed majors are in the field of liberal arts. Shanghai in particular offers the least number of jobs for graduates of Chinese literature, history, or even law.

In stark contrast, majors with the highest employment rates in China include any science such as computing and engineering. Many positions offered in Shanghai now require applicants to have strong science backgrounds, even for unrelated professions.

As a recent university graduate with two liberal arts degrees (BA in Translation and Interpreting, MA in Translation Studies) who spent the past several months trying to enter the local job market, I was perplexed by this demand for a science background. My Chinese friend Olivia, who works in human resources here, attempted to explain.

"Science students' fields of study and work require many years of professional and systematic learning and practice. They are better trained, have more hard skills, a wider knowledge and language base and usually a higher intelligence quota. Simply put, a science student can easily do the job of most liberal arts majors, whereas liberal arts students could never work in science."

Indeed, when I applied for marketing or sales positions at multinational companies like Microsoft and Dow Chemical, they all required applicants to have specialized knowledge of their industry. Marketing and soft skills like sales were deemed utterly unimportant.

It turned out that my sex also did not help my job hunt. As a majority of Chinese liberal arts students tend to be females, our fields are heavily gender-imbalanced and therefore hyper-competitive. Among translation and interpreting students at my university, 98 percent were women. The highest-scoring students in my class, all females, only received three job offers a piece after graduation. Meanwhile, lower-scoring male students in our major received more job offers.

On the rare occasion that I was granted a face-to-face interview during my months-long search for work in Shanghai, I was frequently beset with chauvinistic questions. "Are you willing to accompany clients for socializing (such as dinners and drinking)?" Any time I hesitated, I was told that I was not a suitable candidate.

I also noticed that Chinese women who have already given birth are often more welcomed by companies and recruiting agencies than females who have not. Olivia explained this to me as well: women without children will presumably someday have to take paid maternity leave, which is regarded as a negative investment. She said that, as a woman, she personally tries not to discriminate against young unmarried women seeking work, but she cannot deny that female employees are "less cost effective" than their male counterparts.

"If I recruit a single female, she may leave the position when she marries. Or if she stays she will need to take maternity leave. Under the new second-child policy she can legally take two paid leaves, which means an even bigger loss. And once she has a baby, she will always be focused less on her profession."

Another notable trend in Shanghai's job market is that the number of non-local graduates coming to or staying in the city for work has been decreasing. Statistics indicate that two-thirds of graduates from Shanghai universities are from other cities and provinces. But due to the city's high cost of living and its outrageous property prices and equally-exorbitant rent, a growing number of graduates are being pushed out of Shanghai and into the provincial job market.

One of my high school classmates, Crystal, chose to return to our hometown in Zhejiang Province after only one year in Shanghai. "Though my 6,000 yuan ($910) monthly salary was not bad for a new graduate, I had no savings. Renting a single room cost me 3,000 yuan, and my monthly transportation, meal and utilities expenses were 2,300 yuan. My savings were only 700 yuan, not even enough for clothes."

The first career fair of the year was recently held for Shanghai's upcoming Class of 2016. An estimated 12,400 university graduates attended the fair, and 20,000 personal resumes were reportedly handed out by students. The average monthly salary of the 10,000 jobs being offered by the 478 recruiting companies at the fair was only 5,000 yuan.

Yes, new graduates such as myself should expect to have to live hand-to-mouth for a while as we work our way up the company ladder. But unless more and better job opportunities start opening up for liberal arts majors, I just can't see how Shanghai will ever become China's future hub of innovation, entrepreneurialism and creativity that the municipal government is hoping to refashion it as.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Global Times.

Posted in: TwoCents, Metro Shanghai, Pulse

blog comments powered by Disqus