Employment pressures to remain high for city's graduates

With a click, college student Shan Xiaomin, 22, sent out resumes to 20 companies he found on job hunting websites right after he learned he didn't pass the Shanghai Public Servant exam.

Examiners announced passing scores on the exam yesterday.

Shan, a Shanghai native, prepared a year for the exam. He would have applied for a position at a district tax bureau if he had passed.

"I have no time to wait for opportunities to come to me. Finding a job on the market is no less fierce than taking the public servant exam," he said.

Shan is among 178,000 college students who will graduate this summer in Shanghai. The city's education commission said the total number is equal to last year's graduates and 3,000 more than in 2011.

"The job pressure for college students will not be lowered for some time as the number of graduates stays high every year," said Gao Meiqin, deputy secretary general of the city's top advisory body.

Gao said finding a job remains a big problem for students as companies cut their recruitment plans, fearing an extended global economic downturn.

Parents unhappy over blue collars

Job pressures have caused some students to take jobs as technical workers or in other blue-collar occupations, but their parents are seldom happy about it, fearing the children will not be paid well or achieve a high social status.

More than 55 percent of the parents said they didn't want their children to be a worker of any kind, according to a survey conducted by the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions last year.

"Many college students are influenced by their parents to look for jobs in big cities, or among state-owned companies. The conventional view of selecting a job adds difficulty for graduates to find a job," Gao said.

Xiao Kuntao, vice president of the federation of trade unions, said workers with special skills should be given higher salaries and respect. "If the prospect of being a worker remains dim, there will not be enough younger men and women ready to take over the jobs from the older generation," Xiao said.