People attend a job fair targeted at the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area held at the Shenzhen World Exhibition & Convention Center in South China's Guangdong Province on November 22, 2023. Some 1,200 companies participated in the fair, offering nearly 50,000 positions. Photo: VCG

A total of 4.38 million Chinese people will sit the 2024 entrance exam for postgraduate studies when the test will be held from December 23 to 25, down from 4.74 million applicants from last year, data from the Ministry of Education showed.

The figure saw its first decline in three years. In 2022, 4.57 million people sat the exam. Still, the figure for 2024 is still higher than the 3.77 million recorded for 2021.

Chu Zhaohui, a research fellow with China National Academy of Educational Sciences, said that the drop in the number of applicants seeking postgraduate exams may be due to a rising number of college graduates that are able to land in a job, which many saw as a more realistic choice than furthering academic studies, according to a report by domestic news portal ce.cn on Thursday.

However, Chu noted that the drop was minimal, which means only a small number of people having changed their mind.

A record 11.58 million college students are expected to graduate in 2023, up 820,000 from 2022 level, who are expected to face greater challenges to find a job on the labor market.

Youth employment including college graduates remains basically stable and continues to improve, an official from China's Minister of Human Resources and Social Security said in earlier November, stressing that more job opportunities will be created in the digital and green economy in addition to new forms of internet-powered retailing and marketing.

In the first nine months, the country created 10.22 million new urban jobs, fulfilling about 85 percent of the annual target, according to the official. By the end of September, the country's surveyed urban unemployment rate stood at 5 percent, lower than the same period in 2019.

The number of applicants for the exam had been increasing steadily since 2016, with an average growth rate of 15.8 percent annually from 2015 to 2022.