New first-tier cities' attraction to graduates improving

China will have 9.09 million college graduates and 800,000 overseas returnees seek jobs this year, with most of them looking for work in the new first-tier cities, including Chengdu, Hangzhou, Xi'an and Chongqing, China Youth Daily reported on Friday. 

The newspaper, citing a new report from online marketplace 58.com, said the top 10 Chinese cities that the graduates will work in, ranked in sequence, are Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Beijing, Hangzhou, Qingdao, Nanjing, Chongqing, and Changsha.

Another report from job recruiting platform wutongguo.com showed that while Beijing and Shanghai remain in the lead in attracting graduates, six new first-tier cities - Nanjing, Chengdu, Tianjin, Qingdao, Xi'an, and Chongqing - have surpassed Guangzhou and Shenzhen in their appeal. 

A research institute of real estate brokerage platform Ke.com said Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai are the first choices among graduates to work in, and while the ranking of Shenzhen declined from fourth to sixth, Chengdu jumped from ninth to fourth, and Hangzhou took the fifth spot.

The development opportunities and space in the new first-tier cities are improving, and are even the same as the first-tier cities, but the cost of buying a home, renting a room and living are relatively low, which resulted in most graduates wanting to seek jobs in the new first-tier cities.

Moreover, the new first-tier cities are also aggressively optimizing their public infrastructure, public services, improving comprehensive competitiveness, and implementing policies to attract talents.