Rural situation is interesting, little opportunities, many in informal economy.
Yes historically very UNDERemployed, but at this point it's, and this will sound callous, matter of bootstraps, i.e. rural youth, despite having shittier education are more educated than their rural parents. AKA they are minimal competent to do migrant blue collar work - lots of well paying factory jobs if willing to relocate. But that also hard life style so many choose to not, because modern shit rural life is frequently not as laborious as shit migrant dormitory life.
It terms of stats, rural marginalization = contradictions.
Technically/theoretically rural employment is always 0%. Rural hukou = own small plot of farmland = by definition rural residence are bucketed as farmers. But in terms of useful stats, whatever their unemployment hardly matters because they make so little money, like the bottom 1-2 quantiles in PRC (predominantly rural) aggregates to like 5% of PRC GDP. It's a blip for PRC economic health, but urban/rural divide is irreconcilably unjust. Though also practically unjust especially for PRC demographic trends, TLDR rural is where most of the undereducated old are, it's going to be nice low cost dumping ground for retired people who wants to chill in their gardens.
Yes historically very UNDERemployed, but at this point it's, and this will sound callous, matter of bootstraps, i.e. rural youth, despite having shittier education are more educated than their rural parents. AKA they are minimal competent to do migrant blue collar work - lots of well paying factory jobs if willing to relocate. But that also hard life style so many choose to not, because modern shit rural life is frequently not as laborious as shit migrant dormitory life.
It terms of stats, rural marginalization = contradictions.
Technically/theoretically rural employment is always 0%. Rural hukou = own small plot of farmland = by definition rural residence are bucketed as farmers. But in terms of useful stats, whatever their unemployment hardly matters because they make so little money, like the bottom 1-2 quantiles in PRC (predominantly rural) aggregates to like 5% of PRC GDP. It's a blip for PRC economic health, but urban/rural divide is irreconcilably unjust. Though also practically unjust especially for PRC demographic trends, TLDR rural is where most of the undereducated old are, it's going to be nice low cost dumping ground for retired people who wants to chill in their gardens.