Legions of Eager Workers

Yesterday over 770,000 people sat for the civil service exams in 38 cities in China.

However, there are only 13,500 spots.

That means 98 out of every 100 exam takers will not get a chance at an "iron rice bowl" job. In these economically turbulent times, people are anxious to get a steady well-paying job. And it's a good gig working for government as long as you don't get corrupted...

It's a record number of exam takers this year and another record are the 6.1 million fresh graduates who are looking for jobs.

They have already had to scale down their salary expectations. When I arrived here over a year and a half ago, the average was around 3,000 RMB ($435.60). But now with the economic downturn and the increased number of people looking for jobs, fresh grads could be looking at starting salaries of 1,000RMB ($145.20) or even less.

What is also becoming ridiculous is that employers are now seeking overly qualified people to fill posts. In junior positions they will only look at those who have a Masters or Doctorate degree, and not necessarily in the field the job is for.

As you can see, there is not enough jobs for educated people in China. Things are not developing fast enough for people with university degrees to do jobs suited for their intelligence level, let alone something they're vaguely interested in.

Now they will just take any job they can get, making them question the value of their university education and their optimism for the future.