Emerging industries need more talents

A 2020 employment report by Renmin University of China shows that while planning their future, 25.1 percent of graduates show a preference for IT/communications/electronics/internet jobs, 10.7 percent for culture/media/entertainment/sports jobs, 9.2 percent for business services (including consulting, accounting, law and advertising), and 8.1 percent for financial sector jobs.

Most of these industries are new having attractive pay prospects, high technological content and good development potential.

Another report published by a domestic job-seeking platform also indicated a similar employment preference by college graduates. A recent Max Research Institute study tracked and evaluated the training undergone by 152,000 college students half a year after their graduation to find that those with majors in software engineering, energy and power engineering, and project management had the highest employment rates.

It is apparent that jobs in high-end and emerging service industries, namely service-related white collar jobs, are the most favored by graduates while engineering-related majors have a higher employment rate. This reflects a deep-seated perception in Chinese society that engineering jobs are for workers while scholars must take up other "decent" jobs.

For a long time, all industries in China have experienced explosive growth. In the early stages, the number of students graduating from college was relatively small and because of the shortage of talent, almost all college students had sufficient employment opportunities.

Now there are more seats for those wanting to major in computer science, foreign languages, law, finance, marketing and journalism, resulting in an increase in the number of graduates in the job market. However, relevant data show China has about 170 million skilled workers, accounting for 21.3 percent of the employed people, but only 47.91 million are highly skilled workers, accounting for just 6.2 percent of all employed people. This indicates a shortage of millions of senior technicians, underlining the need to address the mismatch in the number of seats for majors in some colleges and the lack of skilled talents in the job market.

At present, China has entered the stage of industrial restructuring and upgrading. On the one hand, due to fierce competition, the service industry is moving toward high-end, international modernization, which means there is a greater need for talents. On the other hand, the manufacturing industry is adopting automation, and industrial internet is upgrading toward artificial intelligence and the internet of the things, which means greater demand for talents in high-end manufacturing, equipment and key technologies. This kind of mismatch between the talent demand structure and education supply needs to be solved as soon as possible to better promote China's economic and industrial upgrading.

The country should optimize the professional setting of colleges as soon as possible, and rationally guide educational talents and resources toward scientific and technological innovation and upgrading and other much-needed areas.