Graduate job search and deliberate non-employment in China, 2026: survey data and analysis code

Response-level data and analysis code from a survey of 1,755 Chinese graduates conducted between 25 June and 15 July 2026 through a commercial online panel (Wenjuanxing). The sample is not a probability sample and does not represent any region or institution. Respondents reported job-choice priorities, acceptable pay and working hours, the problem they perceived as most serious in employers, reasons for delayed entry into employment, willingness to accept delayed employment, and what they would do if acceptable work did not arrive. The deposit contains the de-identified response data (CSV and XLSX), a bilingual codebook, and four Python scripts that reproduce every statistic reported in the companion article. Internet protocol addresses, submission timestamps, and the empty source-detail field were removed before deposit; the free-text field was inspected for names, institutions, telephone numbers, and web links, and none were found. The study was approved by the Academic Ethics and Science and Technology Ethics Committee of Zhejiang Wanli University (approval number 2026SH0017, 12 March 2026). Participation was voluntary and consent was given by completing and submitting the questionnaire. This deposit replaces an earlier version that also contained a separately collected employer-side questionnaire. That questionnaire is not part of the study, and the present version is restricted to the graduate survey.