Tragic! PhD Employment Rate 0%! Xi Jinping Ushering in an Era of High-Education Collapse

Photo: A group of Tsinghua University students celebrating graduation. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

—Too Tragic! PhD Employment Rate 0%, Master’s Employment Rate 26.98%

[People News] June 7–9 marks China's national college entrance exam (Gaokao) period once again. Millions of "chicken baby" students and their families are emotionally invested—excited, anxious, and hopeful. Motivated by the dream of a better future through hard work, the passion for the Gaokao burns as intensely as the summer heat, year after year. Folk traditions say students should wear green on the first day—"green lights all the way"—and yellow on the last—"brilliant success."

However, as China’s economy falls into a deep slump and deflationary spiral, the employment prospects of college graduates have entered an unspeakably dismal state, facing a bitter winter. Industry saturation, difficulty in employment, academic inflation, and the devaluation of knowledge have cast a shadow over young people. The dream that education changes one's fate is fading, replaced by a new curse of the Xi Jinping era: the more knowledge you gain, the poorer you become.

PhD Employment Rate 0%, Master’s Employment Rate 26.98%

According to public data, in 2025, the number of college graduates in China is expected to reach 12.22 million—an increase of 430,000 over the previous year, setting a new record. The employment pressure for graduates is unprecedented and has become a major challenge for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). According to a report by Zhaopin.com, the employment rate for 11.79 million graduates in 2024 was only 55%, meaning nearly half are unemployed. This is likely to push the unemployment rate for the 2025 cohort even higher, intensifying the crisis of job distribution and competition.

How bad is it? According to a report by mainland media NetEase, a netizen recently posted that the PhD employment rate at a university in Sichuan Province is 0%, and the Master’s employment rate is only 26.98%.

The post shows that on the morning of November 28, 2024, a professor at a certain university in Sichuan said the following in a “2025 Graduating Class Job-Seeking Group” with 267 members: “This is the current employment rate for the 2025 class of Master's students—please use it as a reference. At this time last year, the 2024 class had an employment rate of 51.55%, but this year it’s only 26.98%, just half of what it was last year. Those of you who haven’t secured a job yet, please pick up the pace—but don’t get too anxious, there’s still the spring recruitment next year. As for the PhD students, the employment rate is 0. While working hard to graduate, make sure to send out more résumés—the pressure to find a job after graduation is intense.” The professor also reminded: “Everyone must have at least one offer in hand before graduating. If you wait until after graduation to job hunt, you’ll be competing with the masses in society. Keep going and good luck!”

What’s going on? Only about a quarter of Master’s students are employed, and for PhDs, it’s complete devastation—zero employment. Not a single doctoral student has secured a job!

Economic Decline, Academic Inflation, and Knowledge as a Liability

This isn’t an isolated case. The difficulty in finding jobs and the devaluation of academic degrees have become widespread phenomena. The higher the degree, the harder it is to find employment.

One netizen from Shaanxi wrote: “My wife, a PhD in chemical engineering, is 33 years old and still hasn’t found a suitable job. She started looking before graduation and continues to search after graduation—but it’s like throwing her résumé into a black hole.”

Replies flooded in: “Suggestions for PhD job seekers: bricklayer, carpenter, rebar worker, concrete labourer, daycare worker, security guard, cleaner, landscaper, scaffolder, courier… all are revolutionary roles, vital for socialist construction! Glorious and noble!!!” “In the post-Latin Americanized society, even migrant workers are a step up.”

Back in 2022, news that a female PhD in nuclear physics from Peking University became a local city management officer (chengguan) in Beijing's Chaoyang District drew wide attention. A Manchester University returnee became a chengguan in Cuigezhuang, and two Master's graduates from China Foreign Affairs University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences also landed similar roles. This once made headlines and sparked societal dismay over the devaluation of academic degrees.

With the ongoing economic downturn, competition has intensified even further. In January 2025, Tsinghua University Master’s graduate in civil engineering, Tong Jieqiong, paid 6,000 yuan to learn culinary skills at the vocational school “Lanxiang.” Her story sparked heated discussions. She explained it was a well-considered decision for long-term life planning. This reflects the disillusionment, reluctant awakening, and forced choices of young people amid economic decay.

Tong Jieqiong’s experience is not unique. The so-called “Yao Class” at Tsinghua—once considered the "Huangpu Military Academy" of China’s computer science—used to produce graduates with million-dollar salaries. Now, some are taking outsourced positions.

In a 2025 hiring list for high-level talent at Suzhou High School, there were six Tsinghua and four Peking University graduates. Eight were PhDs and five were Master’s graduates. A private auto parts factory in Harbin posted a job requiring a PhD, with a clearly stated monthly salary: 3,500 yuan.

Today’s Top Scorer, Tomorrow’s Dead End

Academic devaluation stems partly from students’ unrealistic expectations and poor adaptability, but the speed of the collapse is closely tied to the worsening economy and an expanding graduate school system, used by authorities to mask soaring unemployment.

In 2024, 4.38 million people took China’s graduate school entrance exam. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, 1.302 million graduate students were enrolled in 2023, with 3.883 million in school and 1.015 million graduating. In 2011, that number was only 560,000. At Tsinghua University, the 2024 fall term saw 3,800 undergraduate admissions vs. 9,926 Master's admissions. At the University of Science and Technology of China: 2,024 undergraduates vs. nearly 10,000 graduate students. The Chinese Academy of Sciences: 405 undergraduates, over 10,000 Master’s students. At Lanzhou University, the number of graduate students has now surpassed undergraduates.

This reverse pyramid structure isn't aimed at upgrading higher education, but at covering up the bleak job market and making college grads bear the blame for China's economic downturn.

To conceal the economic freefall, the CCP is manipulating data and creating information blackouts. According to Bloomberg, Beijing-based Zhaopin.com has not released its quarterly reports on new-hire salaries across 38 major cities for two consecutive quarters—reports that used to be released within a month of quarter-end.

Bloomberg notes that this missing data reflects China’s increasing restrictions on statistical transparency. Especially in the employment sector, independent indicators to replace official figures are disappearing, making it harder for analysts and investors to gauge a key reality: sky-high youth unemployment, widespread pay cuts, and continuing layoffs.

As the academic halo quickly fades under Xi Jinping’s rhetoric of a “bright economic future,” and when public figures like Dong Xiying and her upgraded clone Jiang Yurong market systemic injustice and class rigidity as personal charm and institutional strength, and when the legendary “second-generation” elites—of officials, tycoons, tobacco executives, energy barons, and bureaucrats—become the ruling Brahmin caste in China, millions of ordinary “cattle” and “chives,” even if they top the exam lists this summer, are doomed to face a sleepless future of dead-end realities. △

(First published by People News)