[Anchor]

In China, 12.7 million young people who graduated from college this year have flooded the job market. This is the largest number in history, but as the adoption of AI reduces the number of available jobs, Chinese youth are being pushed into unstable employment.

Beijing correspondent Choi Go-un reports.

[Reporter]

As evening approaches, delivery workers begin to gather one by one.

Those in yellow are from Meituan, and those in orange are from JD.com.

Although they belong to different companies, most of them are young Chinese people with youthful faces.

Delivery workers from each company wait in front of areas densely packed with restaurants, working by picking up and delivering orders as they come in.

They work approximately 11 hours a day.

[Delivery worker: (Do you start at 8:00 AM and finish at 7:30 PM?) There are set working hours. There are many delivery drivers, but there are few orders, so it is not easy. Everything is more difficult because of the social environment.]

If they work without any days off, they earn about 1.5 million won (approximately 1,150 USD) per month.

[Delivery worker: I deliver about 40 orders a day. (How much do you earn per delivery?) It is about 1,100 to 1,200 won.]

China's economic growth rate for the second quarter was 4.3%, the lowest since the pandemic.

As high-quality jobs decrease due to sluggish domestic demand, young people are flocking to short-term, temporary work.

[Delivery worker: (Why did you come to Beijing?) Because I can earn money. Beijing is the place where you can earn the most money in the north.]

The unemployment rate for young people aged 16 to 24 living in urban areas in China is 15.6%.

This figure excludes students, and the prevailing analysis is that the perceived unemployment rate is likely much higher when considering the so-called "tangping" (lying flat) generation who stay at home, or those who have given up on finding a job, known as "bai-lan" (letting it rot).

[Job seeker: (During my school days) I asked many questions and thought I would be able to find a job after graduation. I never imagined I would end up sending out so many resumes. No one wants me.]

China has launched a campaign to expand hiring, aiming to create more than 12 million new urban jobs this year, including increasing vocational training in the AI sector.

However, with a gap between the skills of college graduates and what companies require, and the automation of certain tasks due to the introduction of AI, resolving the employment bottleneck remains a difficult challenge.

(Video reporting: Choi Deok-hyun, Video editing: Kim Ho-jin)