Photo taken on July 25, 2020 shows the site of a job fair in Yinchuan, northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. (Xinhua/Feng Kaihua)

Jobs at foreign-invested companies in China, once popular with college graduates, are losing their attraction as students look for more stable jobs at state-owned companies or large private firms amid coronavirus-triggered economic uncertainty.

According to 51job.com, more than 8 million students graduated from Chinese universities in 2020, up 400,000 from last year.

This large pool, plus the many Chinese students who graduated from overseas universities and returned to China seeking jobs, make the country's job market very competitive this year, at a time when many companies are facing bottlenecks and have to downsize recruitments.

A graduate from a Beijing university surnamed Geng told the Global Times that many companies seem to be hiring fewer new employees, and some aren't hiring any, because of the impact of the epidemic.

"I find there are barely in China that are in need of a lot of employees nowadays," Geng said.  She said she barely got any responses to her job applications.

A student surnamed Zhou who graduated from a university in UK and started to look for jobs in China in February said that she had sent out 60-70 resumes, but only received one offer as a teacher. 

"I feel this year is the hardest employment time for graduates," she said. 

Facing changes in recruitment demand, many graduates are inclined to work for state-owned companies as they feel such jobs are more stable. According to the report, more than 70 percent of university graduates favor state-owned companies, doubling the number of students who prefer foreign-invested companies. 

Zhou said she did not apply for any jobs with foreign-invested firms. "I feel such jobs are less stable than jobs at state-owned companies," she said. 

A Shenzhen-based graduate said that the pandemic has wiped out opportunities for students who want jobs dealing with overseas business, with many prior offers revoked. 

"You don't know what to expect with the ongoing pandemic. It is more secure to find a job that focus on the Chinese market where the virus has been largely brought under control," the person told the Global Times. 

Meanwhile, some foreign-invested firms are reducing or eliminating their hiring plans.

A human resources specialist with a Shanghai-based foreign-invested company said that no new graduates will be recruited this year.

"In recent years, we would hire 30 new graduates as data analysts and software engineers annually, but the pandemic hit our global sales, and we decided not to hire any," he told the Global Times. 

Wang Zhangming, a veteran human resources specialist, told the Global Times that foreign companies have been falling out of favor with job hunters for some years.

"The bumpy political relationship between China and the US is raising concerns that US companies might be forced to leave China at any time, making Chinese job-hunters feel very insecure," he said. 

China's surveyed unemployment rate stood at 5.7 percent at the end of June, compared with 5.9 percent in May. 

Some Chinese companies have also launched large-scale recruitment plans for domestic graduates. Tencent, for example, announced that it would hire more than 5,000 graduates in 2021, the largest graduate recruitment scale in its history.