ABSTRACT
Job markets in Chinese cities today are characterized by the increasing diversification of job opportunities that has come with growing income polarization. In Beijing and Shanghai, it is not uncommon for people to interact daily with others whose salaries are up to a thousand times greater or less than their own. At the bottom of the economic ladder, the lowest-paying jobs are invariably taken up by the waidiren, the non-locals who came from the rural regions. Yet the meager earnings they receive in the city might be more than what they could make in their rural hometowns as farmers. No matter their income, hope and optimism prevail among China’s new generation of urban workers, encouraged by the lure of the new “Chinese dream.” For them, double-digit growth in China’s gross domestic product has become the norm, and annual salary growth at similar rates is to be expected.
