20120430 TIME_‘Made’ in China: The Millennials Look East for Jobs

Lauren McPhate first arrived in Asia in 2009 after losing her job as a risk analyst at an energy company. She daydreamed about moving to tropical Thailand to start over. The 27-year-old instead landed in Seoul, where an attractive salary teaching English provided an escape from the discouraging economic landscape back home. 


McPhate is one of many young foreigners forging a career in East Asia. Raised in the relative affluence of the 1990s, the so-called millennial generation graduated in one of the worst recessions since World War II. As these young people from some of the world’s richest countries struggle to find jobs, Asian nations are filling some of the gap. “The shifting balance of global growth is making emerging economies more attractive,” explains Madeleine Sumption, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. “It is turning them into receiving countries, when traditionally they’ve been sending countries.”

Receiving countries stand to benefit from the influx of millennial migrants. In China, the world’s most populous nation, population growth is slowing, says Ronald Skeldon, a migration and geography professor at the University of Sussex. The annual population growth from 2000 to ’10 was 0.57%, or just over half of what it was in the decade prior, according to preliminary Chinese 2010 census results. Meanwhile, the population is aging. In 2010 the share of people over the age of 60 in China was 13.3% — a jump from 10.4% in 2000.


Recognizing this shift, China is beginning to loosen its migrations rules in order to compete for migrant workers and fill the gaps in its labor market. As a part of an effort to attract high-skilled migrants, China created the Thousand-People Plan in 2008, offering competitive salaries, fast-track entry, residence rights and sometimes naturalization for overseas talent.

An American teacher gives English lessons to South Korean students at the Seoul English Village

 Last year, the government extended the plan with the Thousand Foreign Experts program, designed to attract up to 1,000 non-Chinese academics and entrepreneurs over the next 10 years. Aimed at improving innovation and research in China, the program focuses on importing academics from top-tier foreign universities.

However, not everyone embraces an open-door policy. Singapore’s government in recent years has faced a backlash of antiforeigner sentiment. Singaporeans complain that an influx of foreigners creates more competition in jobs, education, housing and medical care. In South Korea, where an estimated 25,000 foreign English teachers reside, xenophobia is often a topic of debate. 

Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2012/04/30/made-in-china-the-millennials-look-east-for-jobs/?xid=newsletter-asia-weekly#ixzz1uAqfeido