Since 2007, Lian Si, a young scholar and his team have been conducting an ongoing study of the so-called ant tribe, which refers to young Chinese graduates who live on low salaries in crowded conditions. Recently, the team released a series of statistics from their studies, Yangtze River Daily reported on Dec. 13.
"Ant Tribe",("Yi Zu" in Chinese), published in 2009, features a series of in-depth social reports on the life struggles of university graduates of the post-80s generation in China. Chief editor and co-author Lian Si has started his study on the "Ant Tribe" community since 2007.
It is also hard for "good students" to find job
According to Lian Si's report, the proportion of ant tribe members who graduated from China's best universities has increased too. According to the report, nearly 29 percent of Beijing's ant tribe graduated from 211 Project Universities, universities designated as China's top institutions, which is 28.1 percent more than last year and indicates the hard situation on the domestic job market. Among ant tribe members, graduates from average universities account for the most with 52.3 percent.
This year, the number of ant tribe members with master's degrees increased by 5.6 percent over last year in Beijing, and most of them majored in engineering, medicine, economy, management and other relatively popular specialized fields.
Usually, students from such good universities and hot majors easily make the cut because they not only scored highly national college entrance examinations, but also successfully finished their studies in the best domestic universities. However, in the current job market it seems that good students are also having problems finding work.
Ant tribe spends as much, more than they make
According to the investigation of more than 4,800 ant tribe members in seven major domestic cities, their average salary is around 1,900 RMB per month, and 64.1 percent of them earn below 2,000 RMB per month. However, their anticipated salary was more than 4,500 RMB, which is much higher than how much they actually earn.
Although they do not earn much, their spending is relative high. The report says the average cost for them is 1867 RMB per month on meals, house rent, communication and transportation with barely anything left.
Around 46 percent of the interviewees spend much more than they are paid, 80 percent has no balance and 80 percent have never given money to their families since they started working and some of them even have to ask for money from their parents.
