(ECNS) -- Some Chinese college students are no longer enthusiastic about entering the labor market immediately after graduation, instead opting for travel, teaching in remote areas, spending time with their parents or examining the possibility of starting their own businesses.
An employment report on Chinese college students released in June 2015 showed that 92.1 percent of those who graduated in 2014 settled into a full-time job six months after graduation, though many others fell into the "slow employment" category.
According to the survey, 57.7 percent of respondents said the main reason for slow employment was that they couldn't find a satisfactory job. Yet others want to "look for development orientation in a rational manner and not be restricted by a job before identifying a direction" or start their own business, pursue graduate studies and freelance.
After graduation, Lai Qiang spent more than half a year traveling from Sichuan Province to Tibet Autonomous Region, then on to Gansu and Qinghai provinces by walking and hitchhiking. With no financial support, he worked part-time jobs along the way to support himself.
He earned no salary, but got to know his current girlfriend from Shanghai, who has the same interests. They decided to spend a year pursuing their travel dreams before planning their careers.
Hu Guangwei, a professor at the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences, said college students today have diverse choices when it comes to employment. The old pattern of graduation followed by work, buying a home and then getting married are a lifestyle of the past, Hu added.
Making money is no longer so imperative for many graduates, who instead want to improve themselves or pursue higher levels of development. There are also many novel professions that promise quite different experiences from the traditional 9-to-5 office life, he noted.
"So long as they have the ability to make money on their own and not rely on support from their parents, these young people don't deserve criticism because of 'slow employment'," he said.
