For the past six months Fang Limin has travelled across China in a desperate search for employment, but he is no normal migrant labourer. Fang has a college degree in accounting and speaks decent English but is nevertheless among record numbers of Chinese graduates in the curious position of being jobless in the world's fastest-growing major economy.
"I can't help feeling ashamed. I haven't told my parents the truth," said Fang, 23, whose family thinks he is weighing various job offers fielded in a five-city job quest that has taken him from his home in China's south-west to Beijing.
In fact, since graduating from a Chongqing university last summer he has worked as a day labourer, waited on tables in a coffee shop, and turned his hand to other menial jobs in between fruitless interviews.
With a record five million Chinese expected to graduate from the country's universities over the next month, the competition for jobs is about to get even tougher.
Despite a booming economy, nearly a third of the new graduates are expected to be unable to find jobs, adding to accumulating totals of unemployed past grads like Fang who face dwindling options. Much of the blame for the graduate glut has been directed at Chinese universities that are enrolling record numbers of students as rising incomes mean more families can afford to send their children for tertiary education.
But the universities are not preparing their students to enter an economy in flux. "Most of what we are taught in school is useless after graduation. We have to learn a lot in society by ourselves and try hard to survive," said Gao Jian, whose finance diploma earned last year from prestigious Peking University wasn't enough to land him a job.
"The school does not care about ordinary students," he said. Gao became a symbol of the problem when, after months without an offer, he decided to turn the situation to his advantage by putting up ads last October offering to chat with fellow job-seekers, providing emotional support for a small fee.
He found such a ready market that he expanded from phone calls to instant messaging and recently set up a blog to handle the traffic. "I tried to use this to help students dispel depression and lighten pressure." Gao recently found a job as a "bottom-rung employee" with a Beijing investment company. He uses none of his finance skills, but he says he is just happy that his long job-hunting nightmare is over.
The phenomenon of joblessness in a booming economy is not unique to China. Many countries in Asia are experiencing the same, according to a February report, "Asian Experience on Growth, Employment and Poverty," by the UN Development Programme and the International Labour Organisation.
In China's case, continued massive redundancies at old state-run enterprises had outpaced the ability of the economy and education system to adjust, the report said.
China's government has warned of a potential crisis with 24 million new people -- more than the population of Australia -- expected to enter urban job markets nation-wide this year alone, about half of whom won't find work.
"A special characteristic of China's jobless problem is the many redundant workers and rural farmers flooding cities in search of work," said Chen Xindong, a Beijing-based economist for BNP Paribas, referring to the hundreds of millions of migrant labourers who move around China in search of work. "If that were not the case, current economic growth would likely be sufficient to absorb the unemployed people," he said, warning that the jobless problem is likely to become even worsen as China modernises.
"As efficiency and the use of technology increase, there will be less need for manpower, so with every percentage point of economic growth, the number of jobs created may actually drop," he said. Government remedies thus far have consisted of a three-year-old programme to encourage graduates to work in impoverished rural areas. It hopes to send 20,000 graduates this year.
But much more needs to be done, said Lu Haifeng, a recruiter for an electronics company who expresses disappointment with applicants he met at a recent Peking University job fair. "Students come out of college with a degree but not much else. The only real solution is to reform our education system to get graduates more ready for the workforce or China's competitiveness won't last," he said.
His chagrin over this year's graduates is matched only by the desperation of the students, several of whom flocked around a foreign reporter who attended the fair.
"What company are you with? Are you hiring," several asked. Ding Ning, an upcoming English graduate, hopes to find something in foreign trade or as a translator but expects she may have to settle for receptionist.
"The school does not help us find jobs. It's a very tough situation," she said, adding that the difficulties have intensified the use of "guanxi," the traditional reliance on social connections to obtain jobs. "But none of my friends have jobs either so that doesn't help me," she says. The government's bleak message to students has been to lower their career expectations.
"University graduates need to change their mentality in seeking jobs. Instead of only pursuing jobs that fit their personal requirements, they need to adapt themselves to the available jobs," said a recent commentary in the state-run China Daily.