China’s Youth Job Crisis: Top Graduates Choose Stability of Teaching Over Private Sector

China’s top universities are seeing an exodus of their most talented graduates as holders of master’s and doctoral degrees increasingly turn to secondary school teaching positions. According to experts, this trend underscores the country’s severe youth unemployment crisis and the growing problem of academic inflation.

Local Chinese media reported that Suzhou Middle School in Jiangsu Province has released its teacher recruitment list for the 2025 academic year. The roster is dominated by highly educated individuals from China’s elite institutions. Six of the thirteen successful candidates are Tsinghua University alums, four are from Peking University, and eight hold doctoral degrees.

Four of the six Tsinghua graduates possess PhDs and will be tasked with teaching core science subjects such as physics, chemistry, and biology. The school did not hire a single candidate with only a bachelor’s degree or from a traditional teacher training program.

Suzhou Middle School had initially planned to prioritize doctoral candidates in their hiring process. For those with master’s degrees, the bar was set exceptionally high: Applicants must have secured at least three national scholarships or placed in the top three at national Olympiads during their high school years.

This influx of overqualified educators is partly attributed to Suzhou’s robust financial position, which enables the city to offer more competitive compensation packages. The local government has aggressively courted talent, dangling substantial incentives such as housing subsidies and relocation bonuses to lure teachers from other regions.

While state-run media in China quickly frame this trend as a triumph of education-centric policies, experts paint a more sobering picture. They argue that this phenomenon is symptomatic of the country’s mounting youth unemployment crisis and the ongoing devaluation of academic credentials.

A leading Chinese economic analyst offered a stark assessment: “The shrinking job market in the private sector, coupled with overall economic stagnation, is driving highly educated individuals towards the perceived stability of public sector employment. This shift clearly indicates deep-seated structural issues plaguing the Chinese economy.”