Xinjiang’s rising job market: A blessing and a burden?

As China grapples with a tightening job market, Dong Lei, a 28-year-old Xinjiang youth, is instead seeing an uptick in local job opportunities.

When he first entered the workforce in 2020, the chemical engineering graduate found that apart from a handful of relevant job openings listed on a recruitment app, nearly all the remaining listings were in sales or real estate. But when he switched jobs and searched again last year on the same platform, “it was endless page after page of companies I didn’t recognise.”

Xiaobai, an ethnic Hui graduate born in the 2000s who went through last autumn’s recruitment cycle, had a similar experience. After graduating last summer with a degree in electrical engineering from a second-tier university in southern Xinjiang, he sent out more than 40 applications and received over ten interview invitations and ultimately six job offers.

Xiaobai, who currently works in Urumqi, told Lianhe Zaobao that although competition there is fiercer than in southern Xinjiang, “finding a job in Xinjiang is definitely much easier compared with the ‘hell-level difficulty’ of the rest of China”.

On Chinese social media, discussions related to working in Xinjiang are also attracting greater attention. On RedNote alone, the topics “Xinjiang provincial exam”, “Xinjiang public institution jobs” and “Xinjiang civil servants” have been viewed 57 million, 38 million and 21 million times respectively.

From a border region that once offered limited job options to what some young people now see as a highly popular place to work, almost all six interviewees employed in Xinjiang noted that the region’s economic development in recent years has been a key factor behind this shift.

Dong, a Han Chinese whose family has lived in Xinjiang for three generations, personally experienced the region’s period of prioritising stability. At that time, streets were blocked by stone bollards, police posts were set up every few dozen metres, and iron wire was wound around iron fences. “Whether visually or psychologically, it gave a sense of a ‘city of steel’,” he said.

Since the authorities shifted their focus to economic development around 2021, Dong watched as the security installations on the streets were gradually removed. “Not only has it become much easier to get around, but there are also more shops now,” he noted.

From a macroeconomic perspective, over the past five years Xinjiang’s economy has maintained relatively rapid growth, with annual growth rates exceeding 6% from 2021 to 2024. Increases in investment, industry, and foreign trade in specific sectors in Xinjiang have generally outpaced the national average.

Cheng Lei (pseudonym) and his wife have also felt the changes in their hometown. The post-90s Han Chinese couple, both born in Xinjiang, attended university in other parts of China and chose to return home after graduation to work in government positions.

However, Cheng admitted that there are only about 10% of locally born young people who return like them. Children in the area are generally educated with the mindset of “study hard and leave for opportunities elsewhere”. As for young people coming to Xinjiang from other regions, they mainly fall into two categories: those attracted by government jobs, and those who feel they cannot keep up with involution in other parts of China.

Born and bred in Xinjiang, Cheng has an even clearer picture of how the region’s geography limits its economy. Using online gaming as an example, he explained that most game servers are not set up in Xinjiang, leading to inherent delays in data transmission: “The minimum latency in Shanghai is 9 milliseconds, in Jiangsu just over 20 milliseconds, but in Xinjiang it starts at 70 milliseconds.”

This gap also extends to emerging industries such as artificial intelligence. Despite clear policy support, disparities in infrastructure and industrial support persist. He lamented, “Even if talent and companies are attracted here, without a mature upstream and downstream industry, it is difficult for an entrepreneurial ecosystem to truly take off.”

Stefanie Kam, an assistant professor at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies under Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, told Lianhe Zaobao that Xinjiang’s economic growth in recent years has to some extent boosted employment. However, job opportunities are unevenly distributed across regions and sectors, and turning this growth into “quality employment” for young people remains a challenge.

Looking at the industrial structure, Kam analysed that Xinjiang’s economy centres on the energy sector — coal, oil and natural gas — with a clear capital-intensive profile. While this model statistically drives economic growth, its capacity to generate employment is relatively limited.

She further pointed out that the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps plays an important role in the job market but mainly offers positions within the government system. Meanwhile, the local economic ecosystem lacks small- and medium-sized enterprises that can provide entry-level positions or entrepreneurial pathways, “which is particularly disadvantageous for young job seekers and fresh graduates”.

Zheng Liang, dean of the Institute for Communication and Border Governance at Jinan University, said when interviewed that Xinjiang’s economic structure has gradually adjusted over the past two years, shifting from reliance on natural resources, agriculture and public sector jobs towards emerging industries such as new energy and data centres. Coupled with recent infrastructure and policy support, Xinjiang is not only attracting some local youths to return, it is also attracting talent from other parts of China.

In addition, against the backdrop of intensifying job competition across China, some young people who found it hard to endure a high pressure environment have begun to see Xinjiang as a realistic option.

For example, Zheng noted that in the past it was quite difficult for Xinjiang’s tertiary institutions to hire PhD graduates from universities elsewhere in China. However, with more PhD holders from outside Xinjiang applying for jobs, the region’s main institutions “have started to pick and choose” when hiring doctoral-level staff.

From a long-term perspective, Zheng felt that the nature of population flows in Xinjiang has also changed. In the past, movement was more seasonal and administrative — for example, those who come just to pick cotton and leave after. Now, inflows of talent due to economic opportunity are gradually increasing. 

“When movement is primarily driven by economic reasons, people are more likely to stay, and this will ultimately spur Xinjiang’s development,” he said.

Yusuf, a Uighur civil servant at a directly affiliated public institution in Urumqi, works as a ride-hailing driver on his off days. The post-90s youth told Lianhe Zaobao that intensifying job competition in recent years has put him under considerable pressure.

In his view, increasingly more people from outside Xinjiang have come to work in recent years, and “jobs for the locals have dried up”. A graduate of Xinjiang University, Yusuf felt that jobseekers from elsewhere generally have higher qualifications, which meant “increasingly fewer opportunities” for local ethnic minorities.

Nam, another Uighur post-90s professional who works as a doctor, also felt that job competition became much fiercer in recent years. She told Lianhe Zaobao that a few years ago a vacancy at her hospital was cancelled because fewer than three people applied. Now, more than a dozen candidates fight for a single position.

Even as young people come to Xinjiang to work, the region’s overall development still lags behind many other parts of China. After earning a master’s degree in medicine from a university outside Xinjiang, Nam returned in 2018. Although she holds a respected position in Urumqi, she feels her career is advancing more slowly than that of her Han Chinese classmates who remained in the major provinces. “My classmates are publishing in top journals and pursuing PhDs, but I’m still at a relatively basic stage,” she said.

RSIS’s Kam felt that on a practical level, the uneven distribution of job opportunities could leave some minority groups feeling excluded, especially when posts are concentrated in areas with a higher proportion of Han Chinese residents or in state sectors that place strict demands on language skills and background checks. “Hence, positive macro-level indicators may not align with the actual employment experiences for some groups,” she said. 

She also highlighted that geopolitical factors have an impact. Relevant sanctions have squeezed the room for growth for export-oriented private firms in Xinjiang, increasing uncertainty and potentially exerting an indirect drag on the employment environment.

Zheng, who was born in Xinjiang, took a different view of the claim of being “squeezed”. He commented that such complaints were not new, adding, “We’ve heard similar narratives for more than a decade. In recent years, involution has intensified across many sectors, and it is inevitable that Xinjiang will also be affected.”

He sees the sense of being “squeezed” as personal frustration in a competitive environment, not a reflection of the overall situation or government efforts. “Overall employment has undoubtedly improved with economic growth,” he said.

Zheng also noted that some minority workers prefer flexible work schedules over rigid, continuous production systems. The rise of the internet platform economy has created jobs like food delivery and ride-hailing, opening new opportunities for those who previously struggled to find work.

He added, “Once ethnic minority workers enter the new platform economy, they have to communicate through mobile apps. If their Chinese is not good enough, their ability to accept and deliver orders will be seriously affected. In fact, this is also promoting ethnic integration — in essence, it is technological innovation advancing national governance.”

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “从边疆到就业热土 新疆年轻人机会与焦虑并存”.

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