But this year is worse than ever. There are more graduates, and the country's politically driven zero-COVID strategy is crushing demand for labour.

One answer for the government is to force its companies to hire more graduates. That will only worsen the problem that the state sector is already too big.

Jobs are needed for about 11 million young Chinese who have just left universities. Among them, a record 10.76 million graduated from Chinese unis, and probably a few hundred-thousand came back from studying abroad.

Meanwhile, unemployment among young people is soaring. In May last year, 13.6 per cent of Chinese aged 16 to 24 who were available for work didn't have any. By May this year, the figure was 18.4 per cent.

And no wonder.

The Chinese Communist Party insisted on winning nationalistic brownie points by showing the people it could beat the pandemic with only Chinese vaccines - which now seem not to be very effective.

And the party can't bear the idea of the country struggling fearfully with mass contagion as it appoints President Xi Jinping for a third term in office later this year. Everyone is supposed to be joyful then, you see.

So it's playing an ever more desperate game of whack-a-mole with ever more uncontainable strains of the virus. Things looked more or less under control last week; this week there are new outbreaks and new lockdowns.

How can businesses, perhaps already weakened by a lockdown in April or May, have the confidence to put on more workers when they may have to shut their doors again next week? Even firms that can trade regardless of lockdowns find customers are fearful of spending money.

How pitiable is the position of these 11 million young people.

The usual annual post-graduation job hunt is as stressful in China as it is in Australia. Many clever kids with impressive qualifications struggle to get work that suits their ambitions. Parents worry quietly but frantically about what their offspring will do.

The Chinese government could see this year's problem coming, and it no doubt considered that young people, more than the mature, can cause unrest.

In February it announced measures to help them start businesses - in other words, to encourage them to create their own jobs.

A fat lot of good that will do in current economic conditions.

Getting more desperate last month, the government instructed state companies to hire more graduates than usual this year. Part of these companies' role is in fact employing people, which doesn't help improve their generally poor efficiency.

They seem to be suffering graduate indigestion. Some have still not found enough work for new degree-holders they employed in 2020, says Caixin, a Chinese business publication.

Part of the problem may be that too many Chinese study at university rather than go for technical qualifications that are in good demand. That's driven by an unpleasant snobbishness about manual work.

I've never understood why so many young Australians want to study doubtfully useful courses at uni when they could be earning money more quickly - and more dependably for their whole working lives - as electricians, refrigeration mechanics, carpenters or suchlike.

In China, that bias is worse. City families of middling income routinely want their offspring to go to university, regardless of the youngster's suitability for such studies.

Admittedly, university courses tend to be more job-oriented in China than Australia.

Also, Chinese parents reinforce the practicality of university education. Most will not encourage enrollment in a course that a son or daughter merely finds interesting - say, anthropology or sociology.

"What would you do with that?" they'd demand to know.

But this attitude doesn't mean that all those people with new and practical qualifications - in, say, accounting, software engineering or pharmacy - can get jobs now.

Those who have studied at universities with no great reputation will really struggle.

So will those who have done their courses part-time. Such students are typically a bit older, come from poor backgrounds and are trying to get ahead, but employers look down on them.

The answer should be to lower expectations, but there's great reluctance by graduates and their parents to do that.

I know a family in which the son graduated nine years ago with a useful animation degree from a famous uni, but couldn't immediately get a suitable media job.

This 22-year-old was a car nut - most unusual in China, where there isn't much car culture - and heard from me that automotive mechanics in Australia were not badly paid. He also fancied our driving conditions.

So he wanted to emigrate and study the trade. His mother said: "No. Such work is not respectable."

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(In 2020, by then married, he was willing to disobey her, but couldn't find a way to get here. I'll suggest that he looks again, however. He may soon be fanging along a street near you.)

In another case, I knew a young woman who had just graduated with a degree in public administration from a good uni in Beijing. She took a job in a very up-market shoe shop.

Her former classmates were shocked at what they thought was a downward move - but envious of her remarkable starting salary, about $50,000 a year, not to mention the snazzy shoes she now wore.

More of this year's graduates will have to think about work they didn't study for. The worry is that they may be unable to find even that.