A Comparative Study Of Employment Between College Graduates And Young Migrant Workers

Following 2013 and 2014, respectively known as "the most difficult year for employment" and "the more difficult year for employment", the number of college graduates in 2015 reached a new record high of 7.49 million. The saying "There is no extremity for the difficulty of employment" regarding college graduates'employment is worthy of the name. Whether college students can smoothly graduate and find jobs is a big event closely bound up with people's livelihood, not only concerning individual survival and family harmony but also relating to school development, social harmony and national stability. On one hand, college students are senior and professional talents who have received higher education. In the grim market competition environment, their employment situation is worrisome for it goes from bad to worse. On the other hand, migrant workers are a special group with Chinese characteristics in the economic and social transition of our country, whose employment situation is getting better, resulting in increasingly intense doubts of the society about "Schooling can change one's fate". This phenomenon is thought-provoking. Usually migrant workers include migrant workers of elder generation and young migrant workers. Young migrant workers are known as the second generation of migrant workers or the new generation of migrant workers. Most university graduates and young migrant workers are of similar age, and both live in the same environment of the times, therefore, in terms of employment situation, taking young migrant workers instead of migrant workers as a whole to compare with college graduates is more desirable, more favorable to accurately investigate higher education's influence on the peasantry employment and social mobility and to test whether it can change the fates of peasants'children in the present situation.It requires comparative analysis on the employment of university graduates and young migrant workers from various aspects to accurately assess "Whether university can change the fate of the peasantry". This paper mainly employs the method of comparative analysis and case study method to analyze their employment rate and salary level, work hours, working conditions, job stability and career development prospects, which finds although college graduates has slightly lower employment rate than migrant workers, their salary level is higher than that of the latter. Additionally, college students own the opportunity to enter the primary labor market and advantage industries with better career development prospects, while young migrant workers are involved with longer hours, relatively worse work environment, more frequent job hopping and poorer work stability. In general, obviously the employment quality of college graduates is still superior to that of young migrant workers, showing that higher education can promote peasantry to move up to higher social class to some extent. Besides, the paper explores the reasons of employment differences between university graduates and young migrant workers and attempts to find out essential differences behind distinct employment phenomena on the basis of perspectives of human capital theory, screening hypothesis theory and labor market segmentation theory. At last, it based on shortcomings of existing research articles to put forward five outlooks and it draws conclusions of comparisons of employment between the two and puts forward the corresponding countermeasures in order to expand more in-depth and further research.As to the current employment status of university graduates and young migrant workers, the paper proposes the countermeasures:the peasantry should focus on the long-term benefits and do not give up the chance of receiving higher education rashly; establish pluralistic views of talent and guide the rural youth and their family to make rational education choice; improve college graduates' employment quality and increase the yields of higher education; strengthen young migrant workers' skills training and continuing education to improve their human capital stock; encourage university graduates and young migrant workers to start their own businesses so that multi-channel employing can be achieved; constitute labor security system for young migrant workers in order to safeguard their legitimate rights and interests.