Alibaba and Tencent have started hiring new employees after China hinted at easing crackdowns on big tech (big information technology companies).
According to Bloomberg News on the 19th, Taotian (淘타, Taobao, Tmall), an e-commerce platform among Alibaba’s six business units, announced on the 17th that it will hire more than 2,000 new graduates through its official Chinese social media WeChat recruitment account.
Recruitment areas include engineering, design, algorithms, and data, and new employees will be recruited from Hangzhou, where Alibaba’s headquarters are located, as well as Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Guangzhou’s headquarters.
On the same day, Tencent also announced that it would hire large-scale jobs in fields that encompass artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, robotics, and industrial Internet at home and abroad.
Bloomberg explained, “These companies are hiring amid the easing of Chinese authorities’ crackdown on big tech and the highest youth unemployment rate ever.”
Amid China’s economic slowdown, the unemployment rate for young people aged 16 to 24 reached a record high of 21.3% in June.
Then the authorities abruptly stopped announcing the youth unemployment rate in July.
In China, the unemployment rate usually rises in July with new graduates from vocational schools and universities, and the youth unemployment rate is expected to rise further this year as 11.58 million college graduates are expected to join the job market, the largest ever.
However, some say that China’s youth unemployment rate has soared due to a “job mismatch” problem that lacks jobs preferred by young people, such as information and communication (IT), rather than a simple job shortage.
It is diagnosed that there is a lack of skilled and high-income jobs envied by college graduates due to the slowdown in China’s economy.
Over the past few years, big techs have cut back on hiring by laying off existing employees.
The Chinese government’s tightening of crackdowns on the IT sector, which has traditionally created large-scale youth employment, has adversely affected the job market in recent years.
Alibaba also laid off 13,000 employees in the first half of last year alone, and the number of employees decreased again this year.
Alibaba had 228,675 employees as of the end of June. The number is down 6,541 from March.
Tencent also cut jobs this year after sending more than 7,000 people last year.
Tencent’s number of employees was 104,500 as of the end of June, down about 6,200 from last year.
Alibaba and Tencent large-scale new employees hiring again is interpreted as responding to the authorities’ signs of deregulation.
