China Focus: Shanghai helps new graduates job hunt, for free

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No job in sight, but at least she had a free bed. "I could have spent thousands on hotels just running interviews," she said. "Here I get a free place to crash." Wang is among…

SHANGHAI, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- On her seventh night in Shanghai, Wang Tingyi came back to her small apartment near the subway with a bag full of resumes and a half-empty bottle of water. No job in sight, but at least she had a free bed.

"I could have spent thousands on hotels just running interviews," she said. "Here I get a free place to crash."

Wang is among thousands of young graduates arriving in Shanghai each year, drawn by the megacity celebrated for its glamour, opportunities and high cost of living. For newcomers, the first challenge is often not finding work, but finding an affordable place to stay while they search.

Shanghai's answer has been quiet yet practical: free short-term accommodation, job-matching services and low-cost evening classes designed to help young people find their footing in a city with 24.85 million permanent residents.

One of the world's leading financial centers, Shanghai is a magnet for young job seekers. The city gathered nearly 150,000 new domestic and overseas professionals in 2025, according to its government work report published in February. Apart from finance, artificial intelligence (AI), biomedicine and integrated circuits sectors are also driving demand for talents.

For many young migrants, the first hurdle in Shanghai is finding somewhere to sleep. Hotels are expensive, hostels can be crowded, and uncertainty can make newcomers more anxious than they need to be.

Shanghai's youth stations, a network of free, short-term accommodation run by the local youth organization and municipal government, offer eligible job seekers up to 15 nights of free lodging a year. Applicants must be recent graduates without Shanghai household registration, or hukou, and must not own or rent property in the city.

Wang applied for a room at a youth station in the central Putuo District and was approved the next day. Within a week, she had received three job offers.

Zhang Yuhan, from Guizhou Province in southwest China, had been comparing hotel and hostel…

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