China Life Stages: Work and Professional Life
Education Helps
Chinese people generally start working at the age of 16, except for those who opt for higher education. Educational qualifications and economic standing determine individuals’ choice of profession. With China’s extremely fast-growing economy, its huge population provides it a per capita GDP of developing counties. A visible imbalance exists, however, in the way China distributes its increasing wealth. China’s unemployment rate can be a factor that, coupled with a growing migration of rural Chinese to the cities in search of employment, contributes to the rise in various social problems. For employed Chinese, the typical workday begins at 8:30 or 9a.m. and ends at 5 or 6p.m., Monday to Saturday, with a one-hour lunch break.
Women in the Workforce
China’s labor laws guarantee equal opportunity to women in employment and equal pay for equal work. However, in actual practice, women earn less than men for dong the same job. In the cities, women earned, on average, 70 percent of what men earned: a decrease of seven percentage points over a decade.
Most working women return to work shortly after delivering a child. Having children in no way diminishes a woman’s employment prospects.
The retirement age for white-collar workers in government organizations and companies is 60 for men, and 55 for women. Blue-collar workers retire at 55 in the case of men, and 50 years in the case of women.
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