BERLIN — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the results of two regional elections that saw big wins for the far-right AfD and losses for his coalition “bitter” and urged mainstream parties to form governments without “right-wing extremists.”

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) became the first far-right party to win a state legislature election in Germany since World War II with its result in weekend voting in Thuringia. It came a close second behind the conservatives in Saxony, projections late on Sunday showed.

But the AfD, deemed “right-wing extremist” by security officials in both of the east German states, is unlikely to be able to govern as other parties have so far refused to collaborate with it to form a majority.

Still, the nationalist, anti-migration and Russia-friendly party could end up with enough seats in both states to block decisions requiring a two-thirds majority such as the appointment of judges or top security officials, giving it unprecedented power.

“The results for the AfD in Saxony and Thuringia are worrying,” Mr. Scholz said in a statement to Reuters. He clarified he was talking as a lawmaker for his center-left Social Democrats (SPD).

“Our country cannot and must not get used to this. The AfD is damaging Germany. It is weakening the economy, dividing society and ruining our country’s reputation.”

With a year to go until Germany’s national election, the results on Sunday punished Mr. Scholz’s fractious coalition, which could aggravate infighting.

All three ruling parties lost votes, with only his SPD comfortably clearing the 5% threshold needed to stay in the two states’ parliaments.

Populist leftist newcomer, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), founded by a former member of the East German Communist Party, did better than all of three coalition partners in its first state elections, coming in third place.

“Sunday’s election results are bitter — for us too,” Mr. Scholz said. But he noted that the more dire predictions, that the SPD might fall out of a state parliament for the first time, had not materialized.

Junior coalition partners the Greens and pro-business Free Democrats both fell out of the Thuringia state assembly.

Sunday’s results could also pressure the government to be tougher on immigration and intensify the debate over support for Ukraine, issues that dominated the campaign. — Reuters

SAO PAULO — The number of fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest region for the month of August surged to the highest level since 2010, government data showed on Sunday, after a record drought that has been plaguing the biome.

Last year’s rains came late and were weaker than usual because a weather pattern, known as El Niño, was supercharged by climate change, leaving the rainforest especially vulnerable to this year’s fires.

Satellites detected 38,266 fire hotspots in the Amazon in August, more than double compared to the previous year and the largest number for that month since 2010, data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) showed.

The August data reaching a 14-year high comes after last month’s fire hotspots in the region surged to a two-decade high.

While the data is the fastest indicator of the state of fires in the region, which often peak between August and September, it does not indicate the intensity.

Fires in the naturally wet and humid biome often start on cattle ranches where locals are converting the jungle into pastures for cattle ranching.

Warmer air and drier vegetation have created conditions where fires can spread more rapidly as well as burn more intensely and for longer. Deforestation has also reduced the rainforest’s ability to produce rain and humidity.

Helga Correa, a conservation specialist at World Wildlife Fund-Brasil, said in an initial assessment of the August data last week that the fires were driven by a combination of weather, climate change and human actions.

“The region where we detected concentrated smoke in August coincides with the so-called Arch of Deforestation, which includes the north of Rondonia, the south of Amazonas and the southwest of Para,” she said.

“This indicates that, in addition to climate change and El Niño, changes in land use produced by humans play a central role in the increase in fires,” she said. — Reuters

BEIJING — After quitting the education industry last August due to China’s crackdown on private tutoring, He Ajun has found an unlikely second life as an unemployment influencer.

The Guangzhou-based vlogger, 32, offers career advice to her 8,400 followers, charting her journey through long-term joblessness. “Unemployed at 31, not a single thing accomplished,” she posted last December.

Ms. He is now making around 5,000 yuan ($700) per month through ads on her vlogs, content editing, private consultations and selling handicrafts at street stalls.

“I think in future freelancing will be normalized,” said Ms. He. “Even if you stay in the workplace, you’ll still need freelancing abilities. I believe it will become a backup skill, like driving.”

China is under instruction to unleash “new productive forces,” with government policies targeting narrow areas of science and technology including artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics.

But critics say that has meant weak demand in other sectors and risks leaving behind a generation of highly educated young people, who missed the last boom and graduated too late to retrain for emerging industries.

A record 11.79 million university graduates this year face unprecedented job scarcity amid widespread layoffs in white-collar sectors including finance, while Tesla, IBM and ByteDance have also cut jobs in recent months.

Urban youth unemployment for the roughly 100 million Chinese aged 16-24 spiked to 17.1% in July, a figure analysts say masks millions of rural unemployed.

China suspended releasing youth jobless data after it reached an all-time high of 21.3% in June 2023, later tweaking criteria to exclude current students.

Over 200 million people are currently working in the gig economy and even that once fast-growing sector has its own overcapacity issues. A dozen Chinese cities have warned of ride-hailing oversaturation this year.

Redundancies have even spread to government work, long considered an “iron rice bowl” of lifetime employment.

Last year Beijing announced a 5% headcount reduction and thousands have been laid off since, according to official announcements and news reports. Henan province trimmed 5,600 jobs earlier this year, while Shandong province has cut nearly 10,000 positions since 2022.

Meanwhile, analysts say China’s 3.9 million vocational college graduates are mostly equipped for low-end manufacturing and service jobs, and reforms announced in 2022 will take years to fix underinvestment in training long regarded as inferior to universities.

China currently faces a shortage of welders, joiners, elderly caregivers and “highly-skilled digital talent,” its human resources minister said in March.

Yao Lu, a sociologist at Columbia University, estimates about 25% of college graduates aged 23-35 are currently in jobs below their academic qualifications.

Many of China’s nearly 48 million university students are likely to have poor starting salaries and contribute relatively little in taxes throughout their lifetimes, said one Chinese economist who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

“Although they cannot be called a ‘lost generation,’ it is a huge waste of human capital,” the person said.

‘DOING THREE PEOPLE’S JOBS’
Chinese President Xi Jinping in May urged officials to make job creation for new graduates a top priority. But for younger workers unemployed or recently fired, the mood is bleak, nine people interviewed by Reuters said.

Anna Wang, 23, quit her state bank job in Shenzhen this year due to high pressure and frequent unpaid overtime. For a salary of about 6,000 yuan per month, “I was doing three people’s jobs,” she said.

Her ex-colleagues complain about widespread pay cuts and transfers to positions with unmanageable workloads, effectively forcing them to resign. Ms. Wang now works part-time jobs as a CV editor and mystery shopper.

At a July briefing for foreign diplomats about an agenda-setting economic meeting, policymakers said they have been quietly urging companies to stop layoffs, one attendee told Reuters.

Olivia Lin, 30, left the civil service in July after widespread bonus cuts and bosses hinted at further redundancies. Four district-level bureaus were dissolved in her city of Shenzhen this year, according to public announcements.

“The general impression was that the current environment isn’t good and fiscal pressure is really high,” she said.

Ms. Lin now wants a tech job. She has had no interview offers after a month of searching. “This is completely different from 2021, when I was guaranteed one job interview a day,” she said.

REDUCED STIGMA
Shut out of the job market and desperate for an outlet, young Chinese are sharing tips for surviving long-term unemployment. The hashtags “unemployed,” “unemployment diary” and “laid off” received a combined 2.1 billion views on the Xiaohongshu platform Ms. He uses.

Users describe mundane daily routines, count down the days since being fired, share awkward chat exchanges with managers or dole out advice, sometimes accompanied by crying selfies.

The increasing visibility of jobless young people “increases broader social acceptance and reduces stigma surrounding unemployment,” said Columbia’s Ms. Lu, allowing otherwise isolated youth to connect and “perhaps even redefine what it means to be unemployed in today’s economic climate.”

Ms. Lu said unemployed graduates understood blaming the government for their plight would be both risky and ineffective. Rather, she said, they were more likely to slip into “an internalization of discontent and blame” or “lying flat.”

Ms. He, the influencer, thinks graduates should lower their ambitions.

“If we have indeed entered ‘garbage time,’ then I think young people could accumulate skills or do something creative, such as selling things via social media or making handicrafts.” — Reuters